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Dessert

Doughnuts

A sweet dough made with flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and milk, then fried in hot lard until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Doughnuts

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add softened butter and mix thoroughly.

  3. Incorporate beaten eggs and moisten with sweet milk until a soft dough forms.

  4. Flavor the dough with nutmeg or cinnamon.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan until hot.

  2. Drop 5 or 6 pieces of dough into the hot lard and fry until golden brown, turning as needed.

  3. Keep frying in batches to maintain the temperature of the lard.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as it sets in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas that leavens the dough so it puffs while frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.

The step that matters

Keep the lard hot between batches. Frying in too many pieces at once lowers the fat temperature, so the dough absorbs more oil and comes out greasy and pale instead of crisp and golden. Letting the lard recover between batches keeps the surface sealing quickly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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