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Plain Crullers

Plain crullers are fried dough strips dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Plain Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Whisk the eggs until light.

  2. Stir in the powdered sugar, half the flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon.

  3. Add the dissolved baking soda and enough flour to form a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough into round strips and cut them into 3-inch lengths.

  2. Double and twist each piece.

  3. Fry in boiling lard, turning to brown both sides.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the hot fat.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine sugar dusting that finishes the crullers.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together through frying.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to produce gas that lightens the texture as it fries.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard, turning to brown both sides.. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy. Turning lets both sides cook evenly and brown without burning.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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