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Dessert

Crullers or Wonders

A fried pastry made from eggs, lard or butter, sugar, flour, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crullers or Wonders

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, melted lard or butter, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Gradually add sifted flour until the mixture is very stiff and can be rolled out.

Shape

  1. Roll the dough very thin, like pie crust, and cut it into squares measuring 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

  2. Make several slits lengthwise in each square, stopping ¼ inch from the edges.

  3. Using your forefingers, twist through every other slit to create a decorative shape.

  4. Lay the crullers edgewise on a board and dent them slightly.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until they are a light 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the frying fat.
Melted lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cruller brown in the hot fat.
Sifted flour
Forms the stiff dough structure that holds the shape during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until light brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the crullers absorb grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside 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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