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Dessert

Doughnuts

A sweet fried dough made with mashed potatoes, sugar, eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, milk, and nutmeg.

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

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 ↓

Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, eggs, and melted butter until combined.

  2. Add warm mashed potatoes and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine flour and baking powder, then add to the potato mixture.

  4. Stir in sweet milk and nutmeg until a dough forms.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the doughnut shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the doughnuts rise and lighten.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and tenderness to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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