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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

A simple fried doughnut made with eggs, flour, sugar, lemon rind, baking powder, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the sugar and grated lemon rind, and beat for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix in the milk, flour, baking powder, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry in a deep kettle with plenty of grease.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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
Beaten eggs add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the doughnuts a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts, lifting the dough so the doughnuts rise.
Milk
Adds moisture, so the dough is soft and easy to roll out.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma that flavours the dough.

The step that matters

Fry in a deep kettle with plenty of grease. The doughnuts need enough deep, hot fat to cook through evenly. If the fat is shallow or too cool, the dough absorbs more grease and turns heavy and greasy instead of crisp and light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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