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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

Raised doughnuts are fried dough shaped like rings, made from a sweetened bread sponge batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, butter, and bread sponge by hand until soft.

  2. Let the mixture rise until doubled in size.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour a breadboard and place the dough on it.

  2. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut out doughnut shapes.

  3. Let the cut doughnuts rise for 30 minutes.

  4. Fry the doughnuts in moderately 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and stay tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown evenly in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a richer mouthfeel.
Bread sponge
Supplies live yeast that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy texture.

The step that matters

Fry in moderately hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is too hot, the outside browns before the dough cooks through, leaving a raw center. If it is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy. Moderate heat lets the interior cook as the surface turns golden.

“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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