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Dessert

Amalgamation Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with cornmeal, flour, sugar, nutmeg, salt, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Amalgamation Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine yellow cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add enough milk to form a dough that can be rolled out.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together after frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn light inside.
Yellow cornmeal
Adds a coarse, slightly crisp texture and a corn flavor to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot lard.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients so they form a dough that can be rolled out.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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