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Dessert

Crullers

Crullers are a fried dough pastry made with sugar, eggs, flour, butter, milk, baking powder, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat sugar, egg yolks, and melted butter until light.

  2. Add sweet milk and beaten egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Stir in flour and baking powder until combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough thick.

  2. Cut the dough into shapes.

  3. Fry the shapes in hot lard.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the crullers puff and lighten.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and adds flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown lightly in the fat.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the dough soft.

The step that matters

Fry the shapes in hot lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the dough soaks up grease and turns heavy and oily instead of crisp and light.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, butter, milk. 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.

More crullers recipes

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