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Dessert

Old-fashioned Doughnuts

A yeast-free doughnut made with eggs, milk, sugar, flour, nutmeg, baking soda, and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl for 5 minutes.

  2. Stir in the sugar, salt, sweet milk, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda three times.

  4. Quickly stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until just combined.

  5. Add more flour if needed to make a dough that is stiff enough to handle.

  6. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and roll it out to ½ inch thick.

  7. Cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter and cut a small hole in the center of each.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat frying fat in a kettle until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in batches until light brown, ensuring they do not touch.

  3. Remove with a skimmer and let the fat drain.

  4. Roll the fried doughnuts in powdered sugar and serve hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 to the dough as they are beaten.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda to help the doughnuts rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas for lift.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the dough.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.

The step that matters

Fry in batches at smoking-hot fat without crowding. Fat that is not hot enough lets doughnuts soak up oil and turn greasy, while crowding drops the fat temperature and makes them cook unevenly. Keeping the pieces separated and the fat steadily hot gives a light, evenly browned result.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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