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Dessert

Potato Doughnuts

A fried dough made from mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, ginger, salt, eggs, milk, baking powder, and flour.

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 ↓

Potato Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mash the potatoes and set aside.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the ginger, salt, and baking powder to the mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  5. Fill the cup with milk and combine all ingredients.

  6. Add flour until the dough is workable.

  7. Roll out the dough.

Shape and fry

  1. 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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Potatoes
Adds moisture and starch that give the doughnuts a soft, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and softens the texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the doughnuts rise and lighten.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough can be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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