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Dessert

My Grandmother's Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut recipe using milk, yeast, sugar, shortening, eggs, nutmeg, soda, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

My Grandmother's Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk and let it cool until lukewarm.

  2. Make a sponge with 1 cup of yeast.

  3. When the sponge is light, add 2½ cups of sugar and heaping cups of shortening, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Add 4 well-beaten eggs and 1 teaspoon of nutmeg or any spice.

  5. Let the mixture rise until night.

Shape and fry

  1. Thicken the mixture as needed.

  2. Add soda and enough water to achieve the desired consistency.

  3. Shape the doughnuts and fry 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Makes the sponge rise, lightening the dough as it ferments.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the dough and adds richness.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Frying at the right temperature cooks the centre through while the outside browns. Oil that is too cool soaks in grease, and oil that is too hot browns the outside before the inside sets.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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