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Dessert

Nebraska Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with sugar, eggs, lard, milk, baking powder, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nebraska Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, beaten eggs, melted lard, sweet milk, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add flour gradually until the dough is soft but not sticky.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan.

  2. Fry doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Remove and drain on paper towels.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the hot fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Lard
Adds richness to the dough and carries the heat for frying to a golden crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown in the hot fat.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the dough its soft, tender texture.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the dough is soft but not sticky. Flour absorbs liquid as it is worked in, so adding too much makes the dough dense and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to handle. Adding it in stages lets you judge the texture before the dough sets.

“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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