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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast‑raised doughnut made with butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and fried in lard, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Make a sponge by mixing warm water or milk with yeast.

Mix and rest the dough

  1. When the sponge is light, add butter, sugar, salt, baking soda dissolved in a little water, cinnamon, nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

  2. Stir in enough sifted flour to achieve a biscuit-dough consistency and knead well.

  3. Cover the dough and let it rise.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick and cut into shapes with a small biscuit cutter or into strips.

  2. Place the cut dough on greased tins, cover, and let rise again.

  3. Fry the doughnuts in very hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar while warm.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and give a tender crumb.
Butter or sweet lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to add lift and a lighter texture.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy and pale. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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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