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Dessert

Dough-nuts

A sweet fried dough shaped into diamonds, dusted with sugar after cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dough-nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter and flour together until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Whisk the eggs and stir them in with the rose-water and yeast.

  4. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll it out lightly and cut into diamonds or desired shapes.

  2. Drop the shapes into a pot of boiling lard.

Finish

  1. Sift sugar over the doughnuts when cool.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the doughnuts their structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown lightly in the fat.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough becomes soft and workable.

The step that matters

Dropping the shapes into the boiling lard. If the lard is too cool, the doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Frying at a steady, moderate heat gives an even, light 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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