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Dessert

Christmas Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with sugar, milk, eggs, butter, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flavored with nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Christmas Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and beat well.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  5. Add the sifted mixture to the dough until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into rings.

  2. Fry the rings in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Alternatively, drop spoonfuls of the dough into the hot lard.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to lift the dough as it fries.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, creamed with the sugar for an even texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during frying.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady heat gives a golden exterior and a fully cooked interior.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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