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Dessert

Doughnuts Without Eggs

A fried doughnut made without eggs, using sour milk, sugar, butter, baking soda, salt, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Doughnuts Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix sour milk, sugar, melted butter, baking soda, salt, and spices until well combined.

  2. Add enough flour to form a soft dough.

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

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the doughnuts rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, lifting the dough as it leavens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried exterior turn golden brown.
Melted butter
Adds fat, which contributes tenderness and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives an even, golden result.

“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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