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Dessert

Dough Nuts

A fried doughnut made with milk, butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, baking powder, eggs, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Dough Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine warm milk, melted butter, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with 1 tablespoon of sugar and stir into the milk mixture.

  3. In another bowl, mix flour and baking powder.

  4. Make a well in the flour, pour in the milk mixture, and stir until thick like cake batter.

  5. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff, then fold into the batter.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut with a cake cutter.

  2. Heat lard until hot, then fry the doughnuts in batches, turning after 2 minutes, and fry for another 2 minutes.

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the dough.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, giving the doughnuts lift.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the doughnuts together.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Frying in batches at the right heat. Frying in batches keeps the lard temperature steady. Crowding the pan drops the heat, so doughnuts absorb more oil and cook unevenly, becoming greasy and doughy inside.

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.

More doughnuts recipes

Raised 110Plain 25Potato 18German 17Isle of Wight 16Sour Milk 14 See all 168 →

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