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 ↓
Good Doughnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a bowl, mix sugar and sour milk.
Add melted butter, baking soda, and eggs; stir until combined.
Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.
Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.
Fry
Fry in hot oil until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,721 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,973 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the dough rises and turns tender.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas, lifting the dough.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough together.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavour.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps browning in the hot oil.
- Flour
- Forms the dough's structure once gluten and starches set during frying.
The step that matters
Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and dense, producing tough doughnuts. Stopping once the dough is soft keeps it tender and light.
“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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