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Dessert

Long Lake Doughnuts

A yeast-based doughnut made with sweet milk, butter, eggs, flour, and fried in lard, then rolled in sugar and cinnamon.

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

Long Lake Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the sweet milk, then mix in the butter until melted.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and yeast.

  3. Stir in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  4. Let the batter rise overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a well-floured board.

  2. Let the doughnuts rise for 30 minutes.

  3. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Roll the fried doughnuts in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

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

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Add structure and richness to the dough, helping it hold its shape when fried.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, making the doughnuts light and airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff batter its body and shape.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.

The step that matters

Frying 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.

“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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