Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Lazy Doughnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a bowl, mix sugar, eggs, sour milk, melted cottolene, and baking soda.
Stir in enough flour to make a stiff dough.
Fry
Drop spoonfuls of the dough into hot cottolene and fry until brown. Dip the spoon in cottolene after each drop to prevent sticking.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 it sets in the fat.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the dough.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the doughnuts.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that turns the batter into a stiff dough that holds its shape.
- Cottolene
- Melted into the dough for fat and tenderness, and used as the hot frying medium that browns the outside.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
The step that matters
Drop spoonfuls of dough into hot cottolene. If the fat is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb grease and turn heavy and oily instead of browning quickly. The dough also needs to be stiff enough to hold its shape when dropped into the fat.
“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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