Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Milk Doughnuts

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sour Milk Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs.

  2. Add the sour cream, sour milk, sugar, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, lemon flavor, and nutmeg.

  3. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a soft dough.

  4. Set the dough aside to cool for three hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Sour cream
Adds richness and moisture, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda for lift.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the dough rise.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and tenderness to the fried doughnut.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour dairy to release carbon dioxide, leavening the dough.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that supports the leavening reaction and helps keep the crumb tender.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that gives the doughnut its body.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks. Steady, moderately hot fat gives a crisp exterior and a cooked interior.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes