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Dessert

Old-fashioned New England Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with butter, brown sugar, milk, and flour, fried and rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Old-fashioned New England Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Soften the yeast in warm water, add salt and 1½ cups of flour to make a thin batter.

  2. Cream together the butter and brown sugar, then stir in the beaten eggs and milk, and combine with the yeast mixture.

  3. Add enough flour to make a kneadable dough, about 5½ cups, and set in a warm place overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, knead the dough thoroughly, let it rise again, then divide into thirds and roll to ½ inch thickness.

  2. Shape with a doughnut cutter, place on a lightly floured board, and let rise until doubled in size.

  3. Fry in hot deep fat and roll in sifted 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Bread flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the dough structure to hold its shape and rise.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, leavening the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the dough hold its shape and giving a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the finished doughnuts.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the dough and feeds the yeast, while adding a slightly moist, caramel-like flavor.

The step that matters

Frying in hot deep fat. If the fat is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Steady heat gives a crisp, evenly cooked exterior.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, milk, sugar, bread, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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