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Dessert

French Crullers

A fried dough pastry made from boiling water, butter, flour, eggs, and flavored with sugar and cinnamon.

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 Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine boiling water and butter in a pot. Once it boils, add flour and stir until the dough pulls away from the sides.

  2. Remove from heat and let the dough cool for 30 minutes.

  3. Add one egg and beat until smooth. Then add the remaining three eggs one at a time, beating until very light.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour a surface and drop a tablespoon of dough onto it. Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut with a cutter.

  2. Carefully lift the cut dough with a cake turner and slide it into hot fat to fry until browned.

Finish

  1. Drain the fried dough and roll it in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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).

Sugar and cinnamon 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 starch structure of the dough that holds its shape when fried.
Eggs
Add structure and lightness, and their proteins set when the dough is fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough, giving a tender texture.
Boiling water
Gelatinizes the flour when combined with butter, forming a smooth, workable dough.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs must be beaten in gradually until very light so the dough emulsifies and holds air. If added too fast or under-beaten, the dough can break or turn dense, and the crullers may fry up heavy or greasy.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, 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 butter, flour, 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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