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Dessert

New England Doughnuts

A yeasted doughnut made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, spices, and fried, topped with cinnamon sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

New England Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Stir in the milk, dissolved yeast, and a scant quart of flour.

  3. Set the mixture to rise for 6 hours or overnight in winter.

  4. Beat the eggs until light and stir them in with the spices and enough flour to form a good dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into circles or desired shapes.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in deep coconut oil until golden.

  3. Sift sugar and cinnamon over the hot doughnuts.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.

The step that matters

Frying the doughnuts until golden. Oil that is too cool lets doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the inside cooks through. Steady oil temperature gives even color and a light crumb.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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