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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A deep‑fried doughnut made from a yeast batter with butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in lukewarm milk.

  2. Add salt and enough sifted flour to make a soft batter.

  3. Set aside to rise.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter until light, then gradually add sugar.

  2. Mix in the eggs, lemon rind, and juice, followed by the batter.

  3. Work in flour until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl.

  4. Let rise overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough on a floured board to ½ inch thickness and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Let the cut doughnuts stand on a floured board until very light.

  3. Fry in deep fat, drain, and dredge with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Yeast
Ferments and produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and enrich its crumb.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast and adds softness and flavour to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the cut doughnuts stand until very light. Yeast needs time to build gas in the shaped dough. Frying before the doughnuts are very light gives dense, heavy doughnuts that may not puff properly in the oil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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