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Dessert

Nut Crullers

A fried dough pastry made with eggs, sugar, lemon rind, nutmeg, coconut, flour, and baking powder, rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Nut Crullers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs until light, then mix in the sugar.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, grated nutmeg, salt, and sweet milk.

  3. Stir in the dried coconut and flour, then add the baking powder sifted in.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut out with a round cutter.

  2. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Roll in 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they are beaten light.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the dough together during frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dough so the crullers rise and stay tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown evenly in the hot lard.
Dried coconut
Adds moisture-holding body and a distinct coconut flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the crullers absorb fat and turn greasy and heavy. Too hot, and the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, milk, 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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