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Raised Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from a yeast-leavened dough with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix yeast and salt with enough flour to form a thick batter.

  2. Let the batter rise overnight.

  3. Add sugar and cinnamon to the batter.

  4. Gradually mix in flour until the dough is about 1 inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into squares.

  2. Let the squares rise for a while.

  3. Heat lard in a pot until boiling.

  4. Fry the dough squares until golden brown.

  5. Remove the dough squares from the lard.

  6. Drain them on paper towels.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it rise.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the doughnuts a rich, crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Let the squares rise for a while. Yeast needs time to produce gas and expand the dough before frying. Underproofed squares stay dense and may absorb more oil, while overproofed ones can collapse in the hot fat.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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