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Dessert

Risen Doughnuts

A yeast-leavened doughnut made with milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and flour, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Risen Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk and let it cool to lukewarm.

  2. Add melted butter, beaten eggs, sugar, yeast, and enough flour to make a sponge.

  3. Beat well and let it stand in a warm place for about three hours.

  4. Make the sponge in the evening or late afternoon for overnight kneading.

Make the dough

  1. When the sponge is light, add enough flour to make a soft dough.

  2. Knead lightly, cover, and let it rise in a warm place overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, roll out the dough carefully without kneading.

  2. Place the dough on a floured cloth and let it stand for one hour.

  3. Fry in smoking hot oil, dropping the doughnuts with the air-exposed side down.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Yeast
Ferments the sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough and help it hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and feeds the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in frying.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its body.

The step that matters

Rolling out the dough without kneading. Kneading after the overnight rise would knock out the gas and gluten structure the yeast built, so the dough must be handled gently and rolled, not worked.

“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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