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Dessert

Potato Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, milk, egg, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Potato Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, melted butter, mashed potatoes, sweet milk, egg, baking powder, and salt until smooth.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough out on a floured surface and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in hot 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, giving the doughnuts a tender, soft crumb.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during frying, helping the doughnuts rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the golden brown color develop when frying.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a more tender texture.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and dense. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the potato

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

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

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