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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A sweet yeast doughnut made with milk, lard, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, whiskey, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix sweet milk, ½ pint of sugar, ½ pint of lard, and ½ pint of yeast until soft.

  2. Add the remaining sugar, eggs, grated nutmeg, whiskey, and a little baking soda.

  3. Knead the mixture well and let it rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough thinly, cut into shapes, and let them rise again before frying.

  2. Fry using a mixture of ½ beef suet and ½ lard.

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. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 richness and structure that helps the dough hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and turn light.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a soft crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning in the frying.
Baking soda
Reacts to add lift and helps the doughnuts rise further.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time to ferment and trap gas; if the dough is under-proofed the doughnuts stay dense and heavy after frying.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Pepperfits less well

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