Name: Doughnuts and Crullers
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 3 tablespoons butter, melted; 1½ cups buttermilk or sour milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon ginger; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; 1 egg

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Doughnuts and Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix sugar and melted butter.
Add buttermilk, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and egg; stir until combined.
Roll the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut with a cookie cutter.
Cut out the center with a smaller round cutter.
Heat lard or beef drippings in an iron kettle until boiling hot.
Fry the doughnuts until light brown, turning as they rise.
Drain on a rack and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Store in a stone jar to keep them moist.

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.

Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,973 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,784 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the ginger

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, buttermilk, cinnamon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.