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Dessert

French Doughnuts

A sweet fried dough made with flour, butter, water, eggs, and dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a pan, melt the butter with the water until boiling.

  2. Stir in the flour and mix until very thick, then remove from heat and let cool.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fry and finish

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into deep boiling lard.

  2. Once cooked, roll the doughnuts in cinnamon and powdered sugar.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Flour
Forms the thick base that gives the dough its structure.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the dough puff while frying.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough, giving a tender texture.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully incorporated before the next is added. Properly emulsified dough holds its shape and puffs in the hot fat, while a broken or underbeaten mixture can turn greasy or fail to rise.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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