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Dessert

Raisin Spirals

A fried dough pastry with raisins, rolled around a stick, then coated in cinnamon sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Spirals

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolk until very light.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  4. Add the water to the butter, sugar, and eggs mixture.

  5. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour and chopped raisins.

  6. Mix everything together until well combined.

  7. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about ¾ inch.

Shape and fry

  1. Wrap the dough around a stick to form a curl.

  2. Fry in fresh lard or a mixture of lard and butter until golden brown.

  3. Remove from the oil and roll in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten until light, they add lift and airiness to the dough.
Egg yolk
Adds richness, fat and binding to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the doughnut together while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the doughnut rise and become light.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough that the outside sets and browns quickly; if it is too cool, the dough soaks up grease and turns heavy and oily.

“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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