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Dessert

Delicious Plain Doughnuts

A simple doughnut made from sour milk, sour cream or butter, baking soda, sugar, salt, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Delicious Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the baking soda into the sour milk and sour cream or melted butter until very foamy.

  2. Stir in flour with a spoon until the mixture is stiff and perfectly smooth.

Rest and fry

  1. Let the dough stand for 2 to 3 hours, or overnight.

  2. Roll out the dough and fry without kneading.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas and lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to leaven the dough and make it rise.
Sour cream or melted butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the dough and adds richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once it is stiff.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished doughnuts.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough and fry without kneading. Kneading develops gluten, which makes fried dough tough and dense. Rolling gently and frying without kneading keeps the doughnuts tender.

“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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