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Dessert

Crullers with Baking-powder

A fried dough pastry made with flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, egg, and milk, then fried and dusted with sugar.

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

Crullers with Baking-powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  3. Add the egg to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Quickly stir in the sifted flour and enough cold milk to form a stiff paste.

  5. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the crullers in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Remove from oil and sprinkle with sugar before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the hot oil, helping the crullers puff and lighten.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and carries flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown in the hot oil.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and milk quickly. Overworking flour once liquid is added develops gluten, which makes the crullers tough and dense rather than tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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