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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

Yeast-leavened doughnuts made from a milk and flour batter and dough, fried in deep fat and rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald and cool the milk.

  2. When lukewarm, dissolve the yeast cake in water and add to the milk along with salt and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  3. Let the batter rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add melted shortening, sugar, beaten eggs, nutmeg, and enough flour to make a stiff dough.

  2. Let the dough rise again; if too soft, add more flour.

Shape, fry and coat

  1. On a floured board, pat and roll the dough to ¾ inch thickness.

  2. Shape with a cutter and work between hands until round.

  3. Place on a floured board, let rise for 1 hour, then turn and let rise again.

  4. Fry in deep fat and drain on brown paper.

  5. Cool and roll in powdered sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 batter so the doughnuts rise and become light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and brown well.
Butter and lard mixed
Adds fat for tenderness and a soft crumb in the dough.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown during frying.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its proteins help give a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and stiffness.

The step that matters

Adjusting the dough stiffness before the second rise. The dough should be stiff enough to hold its shape; too much moisture makes it spread and rise poorly, while extra flour makes it dense. Flour is added gradually so the texture stays balanced.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

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