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Dessert

Sour Milk Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with sour milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Milk Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, sour cream, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

  3. Knead the dough gently on a floured surface until firm enough to roll out.

  4. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  5. Combine trimmings with a fresh spoonful of dough and repeat until all dough is used.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan until hot enough for the doughnuts to rise instantly to the top.

  2. Fry the doughnuts 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they are beaten in.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, tenderising the dough while reacting with the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the main structure that lets the dough be kneaded, rolled and cut.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the doughnuts rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough. Knead gently only until the dough is firm enough to roll. Overworking develops too much gluten, making the doughnuts tough and dense rather than tender.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Cinnamonthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

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