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Dessert

New England Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and lard for frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

New England Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and yeast.

  2. Add enough warm milk to form a dough and let it rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into diamonds.

  2. Heat lard in a small iron kettle until boiling hot.

  3. Fry the doughnuts, turning when brown on one side, and remove with a slotted spoon.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and lets it be rolled and cut.
Baker's yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise until light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and gives it a richer crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and feeds the yeast, supporting browning in the frying step.

The step that matters

Frying the doughnuts in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Turning once the underside is brown lets the dough cook evenly.

“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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