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Dessert

Chocolate Doughnuts

Chocolate doughnuts made with melted chocolate, sugar, eggs, butter, sour milk, vanilla, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine melted chocolate and sugar.

  2. Add eggs, melted butter, sour milk, and vanilla extract; mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine baking soda and flour.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring until smooth.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the frying oil.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lightens the dough.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the doughnut shape during frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring until smooth.. Adding flour gradually and stirring just until smooth lets the dough come together evenly. Overworking flour develops gluten, which makes doughnuts tough and dense.

“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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