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Dessert

Dough Nuts

A fried doughnut filled with jam, dusted with sugar.

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 ↓

Dough Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine flour, butter, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Mix the mixture well with your fingers.

  3. Add baking powder and mix with a spoon.

  4. Beat the egg in a separate plate.

  5. Add milk to the beaten egg and mix with the flour mixture.

  6. Flour a surface.

  7. Turn out the stiff mixture onto the floured surface.

  8. Knead lightly.

  9. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.

Shape and fill

  1. Cut the dough into small rounds.

  2. Place a little jam on half of the rounds.

  3. Cover the jammed rounds with the other halves.

  4. Lightly press the edges to seal.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat butter or clarified fat in a pan.

  2. Fry the doughnuts for 3-4 minutes until brown.

  3. Drain on blotting paper.

  4. Dust with sifted sugar.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the doughnuts together.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Seal the edges before frying. If the edges are not pressed firmly, the jam can leak out during frying and the doughnuts can open up. A tight seal keeps the filling inside as the dough expands in hot fat.

“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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