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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

A simple fried doughnut made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, and nutmeg, then fried and sugared.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub together the flour, sugar, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the baking powder and a pinch of nutmeg.

  3. Form the mixture into a ball and make a hole in the center.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the dough in hot fat for five minutes until golden.

  2. Drain on paper and sprinkle thickly with 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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and sets when fried.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and gives a richer texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the doughnut rise and become light in the fryer.
Milk
Adds moisture that binds the dough and softens its crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Frying the dough in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb grease and turn heavy and oily. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady heat gives a light, evenly cooked doughnut.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk. 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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