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Dessert

Old-fashioned Doughnuts

A doughnut made with egg, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, salt, ginger, nutmeg, cream of tartar, and flour, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg well.

  2. Add sugar, sour milk, baking soda, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and cream of tartar.

  3. Mix in the flour gradually until a dough forms.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

  2. Cut into doughnut shapes and fry until golden.

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that supports the leavening reaction and helps set texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour gradually until a dough forms. Adding flour gradually lets you stop when the dough is just workable. Too much flour makes the doughnuts dense and tough, because extra flour develops more gluten and dries the dough.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, nutmeg, cream, 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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