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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with milk, butter, lard, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour, fried and sugared.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk and stir in the salt, yeast, butter, lard, and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  2. Set the mixture near the stove to rise until light.

  3. Work in the sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  4. Add flour until the dough is not quite as stiff as bread, kneading well.

  5. Let the dough rise again until very light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough thin.

  2. Cut the dough into small round cakes.

  3. Fry the cakes in hot lard.

  4. Sprinkle sugar over the fried doughnuts.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough, helping it hold its shape and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and improving flavour.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and serves as the hot frying medium.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light texture. Under-proofed dough fries up dense, while the second rise builds the airy crumb that the frying then sets.

“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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