Skip to main content
Dessert

Maryland Dough Nuts

Maryland doughnuts are fried dough balls made with egg, butter, sugar, sour milk, cinnamon, cloves, flour, baking soda, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Maryland Dough Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Break the egg into a bowl and beat it well.

  2. Mix in the melted butter, sugar, sour milk, cinnamon, cloves, and 9 ounces of flour.

  3. Stir in the baking soda dissolved in boiling water.

  4. Work in another 9 ounces of flour until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into rounds.

  2. Fry the rounds in plenty of boiling fat until golden brown.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Egg binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the doughnuts rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, giving the doughnuts lift.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the doughnuts together.

The step that matters

Frying in plenty of boiling fat. The fat must be hot and deep enough so the dough sets quickly and absorbs little oil. If it is too cool, doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy and greasy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes