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Piecrust Doughnuts

A doughnut made from a sour dough mixture derived from leftover pie crust, fried in boiling lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Piecrust Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Prepare sour dough by saving leftover pie crust bits, covering them with sweet milk, and letting them sit in a warm place until sour.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sour dough, eggs, sugar, salt, baking soda, and nutmeg.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff but soft enough to handle.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into doughnut shapes.

  2. Let the cut doughnuts rise on the board until they begin to puff up.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sour dough
Adds acidity and fermented flavour, and its acid reacts with the baking soda to lift the dough.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the doughnuts hold their shape and set when fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour dough's acidity to produce gas, helping the doughnuts rise and puff.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot lard.
Flour
Provides the structure that gives the dough its stiff, handleable body.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the doughnuts absorb more fat and turn greasy before the centre cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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