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Dessert

Grandma's Crullers

A fried pastry made with lard, egg, nutmeg, sugar, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grandma's Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix lard, egg, nutmeg, sugar, buttermilk, baking soda dissolved in warm sour milk, and salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut into desired shapes.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the crullers.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk and buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that activates the baking soda and gives a tender texture.
Lard or drippings
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and is the medium that browns the crullers when fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that stiffens the dough so it can be cut and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to cook the dough quickly. If it is too cool, crullers absorb excess fat and turn greasy, while too hot a fat browns the outside before the centre cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Dillfits less well

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