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Dessert

Crullers

Crullers are fried dough pastries made from butter, sugar, eggs, cream, flour, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Dissolve the saleratus in the thick cream and add it to the mixture.

  3. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is as stiff as bread dough.

Shape and fry

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

  2. Fry the shapes 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough's shape.
Saleratus
Releases gas to lighten the dough as it cooks.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Fry the shapes in hot lard until golden brown.. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

“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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