Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Old-fashioned Crullers
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, lard, baking powder, and salt.
Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.
Shape
Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut it into squares.
Cut each square into strips from the bottom to near the top edge to resemble five fingers.
Slightly twist each strip and bring them together at the end.
Fry and finish
Heat Cottolene in a deep pan and drop the crullers in when hot.
Fry until golden brown, then sprinkle with sugar.
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.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the crullers.
- Lard
- Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a short texture.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during frying so the crullers puff and lighten.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.
- Flour
- Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the dough its stiff structure.
The step that matters
Frying the crullers. The Cottolene must be hot before the dough goes in. Hot fat seals the surface quickly, so the crullers absorb less oil and brown evenly rather than turning greasy and pale.
“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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