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Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Doughnuts

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with butter, sugar, and sweet milk.

  3. Add flour gradually to form a soft dough.

  4. Stir in baking powder.

Fry

  1. Shape the dough into doughnuts and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture, giving the doughnuts a tender, soft crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and a more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping bind the dough.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the shape during frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the doughnuts rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually until the dough is soft but not stiff. Too much flour makes the doughnuts dense and tough, because gluten develops with extra mixing and dry flour absorbs moisture the potatoes and milk need.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, sugar, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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