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Dessert

Okchard Beach Dough-nuts

A fried doughnut made with sugar, eggs, lard, milk, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Okchard Beach Dough-nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, eggs, and salt.

  2. Add lard and milk, then mix well.

  3. Combine cream of tartar with flour and add to the mixture.

  4. Flavor with nutmeg and mix until smooth.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Cut into desired shapes.

  3. Fry 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to lift it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to release gas for rising.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together for rolling and frying.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries heat for frying to a golden crust.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. 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 (sugar, egg, milk, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, cream, 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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