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Doughnuts Without Yeast

A yeast‑free doughnut made with butter, sour milk, sugar, baking soda, eggs, flour, lemon extract, nutmeg, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Doughnuts Without Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the sour milk, eggs, and dissolved saleratus; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until a smooth dough forms.

  4. Stir in lemon extract and grated nutmeg.

Shape and fry

  1. On a floured surface, roll the dough to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut into squares, diamonds, or circles.

  3. Fry in boiling lard 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and a fine, even texture.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the saleratus to help the dough rise.
Saleratus (baking soda)
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, leavening the doughnuts.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure once gradually worked in.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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