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Dessert

Common Doughnuts

A sweet fried dough made with sugar, lard, butter, milk, baking powder, salt, eggs, and spices.

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

Common Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the milk, salt, spices, and beaten eggs.

  3. Mix in just enough flour to roll out to ½ inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut into circles or long pieces to twist.

  2. Fry in boiling lard 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries heat and gives a crisp golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the dough soaks up grease and turns heavy and oily. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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

More doughnuts recipes

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