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Dessert

Good Plain Dough-nuts

A simple doughnut made from flour, sugar, lard, egg, baking soda, cream of tartar, and water, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Good Plain Dough-nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour with baking soda and cream of tartar.

  2. Add sugar, lard, egg, salt, and enough cold water or sweet milk to form a dough.

  3. Knead the dough lightly and roll it out.

Fry

  1. Cut into doughnut shapes and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and milk 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the doughnuts rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries the heat that browns the doughnuts in frying.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives an even, golden result.

“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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