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Dessert

Crullers. Best and Quickest.

Crullers are fried dough rings made from flour, baking powder, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, salt, and nutmeg.

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 ↓

Crullers. Best and Quickest.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the baking powder into the flour.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the milk, then add the eggs, melted butter, salt, and nutmeg flavor.

  3. Pour the liquid mixture into the center of the flour and mix until combined.

Shape and fry

  1. For shaping, use a double cutter to make rings or cut rolled dough into bands.

  2. Cut out shapes and fry immediately.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the crullers when done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once cooked.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the crullers.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to give the crullers lift.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown as they fry.

The step that matters

Fry immediately after cutting. Once shaped, the dough begins to rest and lose its lift as the baking powder works. Frying straight away keeps the gas bubbles active so the crullers puff and stay light.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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