Name: Crullers with Eggs
Ingredients: ¼ pound butter; ¼ pound sugar; 3 egg yolks; 12 ounces flour; ¼ teaspoon powdered cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; cold milk (as needed); 3 egg whites; plenty of frying fat

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs.
Quickly beat in the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and enough cold milk to form a stiff paste.
Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently fold them into the cruller paste.

Shape and fry

Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into shapes using a pastry wheel.
Fry the crullers in hot fat until golden brown.
Serve hot or cold.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 to the dough.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the paste together while frying.
Egg yolks: Add richness and help bind the dough.
Egg whites: Whipped and folded in, they lighten the dough and add air.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown when fried.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to a stiff froth trap air that lightens the paste. Folding gently keeps that air in, while vigorous stirring would deflate it and leave the crullers dense.

“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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Crullers with Eggs