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Dessert

Doughnuts and Crullers

A yeast dough made from boiled potatoes, flour, milk, butter, eggs, and sugar, shaped into doughnuts and crullers and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 and Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the yeast starter

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes and mix with flour and scalding potato water until smooth.

  2. Add white sugar and let it cool to lukewarm, then mix in the yeast and let it ferment for 6-8 hours.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine lukewarm milk, butter, beaten eggs, grated nutmeg, salt, and the prepared yeast mixture.

  2. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms, then cover and let rise overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, shape the dough with minimal flour and let it rise near a warm stove for several hours.

  2. Fry the doughnuts until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough, helping it hold its shape and feel tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its body and structure.
Potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the doughnuts soft and fresh.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise overnight and again before frying. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas for the dough to become light. Underproofed dough stays dense and heavy, and overproofed dough can collapse or absorb too much oil when fried.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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