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Dessert

Angie's Doughnuts

A yeast‑free doughnut made with sugar, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, butter, flour, spices, and fried in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Angie's Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, butter, and spices as for cake.

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

  3. Roll the dough to about ¼ inch thick and cut out doughnuts.

Fry and serve

  1. Test the oil by dropping in a piece of dough; if it rises quickly and does not scorch, the heat is right.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard.

  3. Turn the doughnuts over when they rise.

  4. Sift powdered sugar over them 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape while frying.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas, helping the doughnuts rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, adding lift to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.

The step that matters

Testing the oil temperature. If the lard is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside scorches before the inside cooks. A test piece of dough shows whether the heat is right.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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