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Dessert

New England Raised Doughnuts

A sweet doughnut made with mashed potato, milk, butter, lard, yeast, flour, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

New England Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mash the boiled potato smoothly.

  2. Add milk, salt, yeast, and flour to the potato and let rise overnight.

  3. In the morning, stir in sugar, lard, butter, beaten eggs, cinnamon, and baking soda, adding enough flour to make a thick batter.

  4. Let the dough rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and let it stand for 15 minutes after cutting into shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, ensuring they are fully cooked by breaking one open.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the doughnuts their structure.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the dough to rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough set and brown during frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot oil.
Butter and lard
Add fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.
Boiled potato
Adds moisture and starch that keep the dough soft and help it rise.

The step that matters

Frying until fully cooked. Outside browning happens quickly in hot oil, while the centre needs time to cook through. Breaking one open checks that the interior is done before the rest are removed.

Swap the potato

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

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

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