Skip to main content
Dessert

Amalgamation Doughnuts

A doughnut made from cornmeal, flour, sugar, and spices, rolled and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and sugar.

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

  3. Roll out the dough and cut it into rounds.

Fry

  1. Fry the doughnuts in 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. 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 rolling and frying.
Yellow cornmeal
Adds a coarser, slightly crisp texture and a mild corn flavor to the doughnuts.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light in the hot fat.
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 and cut.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy and dense. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives a light, evenly cooked result.

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.

More doughnuts recipes

Raised 110Plain 25Potato 18German 17Isle of Wight 16Sour Milk 14 See all 168 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes