Name: Delicious Doughnuts
Ingredients: ½ cup pulverized sugar; ½ cup butter (size of a large walnut); ⅓ cup sweet milk; 2 eggs; 1¼ cups sifted flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; a little grated nutmeg

Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Delicious Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar together.
In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk.
Pour the egg mixture slowly onto the creamed sugar, beating in a little at a time.
Add 1¼ cups of sifted flour and beat until smooth.
In ½ cup of flour, mix 2 teaspoons of baking powder and a little grated nutmeg, then add to the mixture.
Continue adding flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out.

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.

Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,230 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutthe original

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