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Dessert

Knickekbocker Crullers

A fried pastry made from a stiff dough of butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, milk, and flour.

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 ↓

Knickekbocker Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and milk; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut into 3-inch squares.

  2. Make slits in each square, resembling a comb with teeth half an inch wide.

  3. Fry the squares 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creams with butter for sweetness and a light texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help it lighten and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that makes the dough stiff enough to cut and slit.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the squares absorb grease and turn heavy and oily instead of crisping. Frying at a steady high heat seals the surface quickly, so the cruller cooks through with a crisp exterior and light interior.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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