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Sponge Doughnuts

Sponge doughnuts are fried rings made from a sweet dough containing sugar, milk, eggs, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sponge Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, sweet milk, eggs, and baking powder.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into rings.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard 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.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 structure and richness as they set in the fry.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the doughnuts puff and lighten.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot fat.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled out and cut.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives a light, evenly cooked result.

“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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