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Dessert

Crullers

A fried dough pastry made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crullers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar until light.

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

  3. Mix and sift the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon; add to the creamed mixture.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. If the dough is too soft, add more flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Shape the dough and fry in deep, hot fat.

  2. Dredge with sugar before serving.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the dough cream to a light texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough as it sets in the fat.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once it is set by frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dough so the crullers rise and stay tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown lightly during frying.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour hydrates into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Frying in deep, hot fat. If the fat is too cool, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy and heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks. Steady, hot oil seals the surface quickly so the crullers puff and cook through.

“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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