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Dessert

Mrs. Wrights Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with eggs, sugar, lard or butter, nutmeg, sour milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mrs. Wrights Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar.

  2. Add the lard or butter and nutmeg, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda until combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick, cut into strips, and twist them.

  2. Fry the twisted dough in hot lard 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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 richness and structure as they set in the frying fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Lard or butter
Adds fat, which gives a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that react with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that lightens the dough.

The step that matters

Fry the twisted dough in hot lard until golden brown.. If the fat is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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

More doughnuts recipes

Raised 110Plain 25Potato 18German 17Isle of Wight 16Sour Milk 14 See all 168 →

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