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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A doughnut made by mixing light dough with batter and lard, rising, then frying in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine the light dough with the mixed batter and lard.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the sugar into the dough.

  3. Knead the dough lightly.

  4. Let the dough rise.

Shape and fry

  1. Work the dough down, roll it out, and cut into shapes.

  2. Let the doughnuts rise until very light.

  3. Fry in hot lard, adding cinnamon for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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
Add structure and richness to the dough and help it hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.
Lard
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and carries the heat for frying.
Light dough
Provides the yeast-risen base that gives the doughnuts their lightness.

The step that matters

Letting the doughnuts rise until very light. Under-proofed doughnuts stay dense and may turn heavy or greasy in the hot lard. Full rising lets the gas trapped in the dough expand, so the doughnuts puff and fry up light.

“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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