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Dessert

Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Doughnuts

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. While the mashed potatoes are warm, mix in the butter until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar, eggs, and sweet milk, and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour and baking powder until a dough forms.

  4. Add nutmeg and salt to taste.

Fry

  1. Shape the dough into doughnuts and fry 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and tenderness to the dough, keeping the doughnuts soft.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas to help the doughnuts rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Oil that is too cool lets doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks through. Keeping the frying steady gives a light, fully cooked doughnut.

Swap the potato

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

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

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