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Dessert

Old Fashioned Doughnuts

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Old Fashioned Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg, salt, beaten eggs, and milk.

  3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add it to the mixture.

  4. Dredge a board with flour, roll out the dough, and cut it into strips or rings.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the doughnuts in hot oil until golden brown. Ensure they are cooked all the way through.

  2. Drain on coarse paper to absorb excess grease. For less grease, briefly plunge each doughnut in hot water after frying.

  3. Roll in powdered sugar when cool, if desired.

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. 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. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the doughnut shape while frying.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough so it holds together.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives richer flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during frying.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Frying until cooked through. The outside browns quickly while the centre can stay raw. Frying at a steady hot temperature until golden and fully cooked through prevents a doughy middle and greasy, heavy results.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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