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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

A simple yeast‑free doughnut made with sugar, eggs, butter, milk, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, melted butter, and milk.

  2. Add the baking powder, salt, and nutmeg, and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is workable.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn lighter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour.
Milk
Provides liquid to hydrate the flour and form the dough.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the dough together.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives a cooked interior and an even golden colour.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

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