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Dessert

Soda Doughnuts

Soda doughnuts are fried dough made with flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Soda Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, mace, and sugar.

  2. Gradually mix in cold milk to form a dough.

  3. Roll the dough out to a thin layer and cut into desired shapes.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan and fry the doughnuts 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that lightens the doughnuts.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Cold milk
Hydrates the flour to bind the dough together.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Lard must be hot enough to cook the dough through and brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside darkens before the inside cooks.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, 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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