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Dessert

Risen Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, spices, and flour, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Risen Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the milk, yeast, and 1 quart of flour; mix well.

  3. Cover and let rise overnight.

  4. In the morning, add the beaten eggs, spices, and the remaining flour.

  5. Let the dough rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough into thick sheets, cut into shapes, and fry in hot 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.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, making the dough light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the finished doughnut.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crust brown during frying.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light texture. Underproofed dough stays dense and can soak up more oil when fried.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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