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Dessert

Dough Nuts, American

A fried doughnut made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, and allspice, dusted with sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Dough Nuts, American

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the allspice and sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Whisk the eggs with the milk and add to the flour mixture.

  4. Knead the dough and let it rise in a warm place.

Fry and finish

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry the shapes in boiling oil or lard until golden brown.

  3. Drain on a moistened sieve and dust with sifted 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the doughnuts their structure.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and binding to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the dough soft.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil or lard. If the fat is too cool, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives a golden, fully cooked doughnut.

“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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