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Dessert

Dough. Nuts, American.

A fried doughnut made with flour, butter, sugar, allspice, yeast, eggs, milk, and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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, American.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the allspice and sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk and mix with the eggs.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then let the mixture rise in a warm place.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry the shapes in boiling oil or lard until golden brown, about 5 to 10 minutes.

Finish and store

  1. Drain on a moistened sieve and dust with sifted sugar.

  2. Store in a dry place.

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. Butter + milktop 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 + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 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 and lets it be rolled and shaped.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the doughnuts a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape while frying.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and activates the yeast.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to set the outside quickly and brown it. If the oil is too cool, the dough soaks up oil and turns greasy, and if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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