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Dessert

Crullers or Fried Cakes

Crullers are fried dough rings made with sugar, sour milk, eggs, butter, spices, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crullers or Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, sour milk, eggs, melted butter, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Stir until combined and form a dough slightly stiffer than biscuit dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut with a doughnut cutter.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the doughnuts until golden brown, about 10 minutes, turning frequently.

  3. Remove from lard and drain until no longer dripping.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the frying lard.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the dough and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, helping the crullers rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown during frying.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts until golden brown. Lard must be hot enough to cook the dough quickly; if it is too cool, crullers absorb excess fat and turn greasy, while overly hot lard browns the outside before the centre 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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