Skip to main content
Dessert

Dough Nuts, American

A yeast doughnut made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and allspice, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Dough Nuts, American

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the allspice and sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm milk and mix with the eggs.

  4. Combine all ingredients and work together until smooth.

  5. Place the mixture in a warm spot to rise.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry the shapes in boiling oil or lard until golden brown.

  3. Drain on a sieve and dust with sifted sugar.

Store

  1. Store in a dry place.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the doughnuts their structure.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough bind and hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a richer flavour.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and activates the yeast.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast while helping the surface brown.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not fully boiling, the dough absorbs oil instead of searing quickly, leaving the doughnuts greasy and pale rather than crisp and golden.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes