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Dessert

Norwegian Doughnuts

A sweet yeast doughnut made with butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, yeast, milk, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Norwegian Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Whisk the eggs.

  4. Mix the whisked eggs gradually with the yeast and enough milk to form a soft dough.

  5. Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place.

  6. Once risen, shape the dough into balls or desired forms.

Fry and drain

  1. Drop the shaped dough into a saucepan of boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

  3. Place the fried doughnuts on a sieve to dry.

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 structure that holds the dough together and sets when fried.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough, giving it structure and a tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried exterior brown.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying in hot lard browns the surface quickly while the interior cooks through. Oil that is too cool lets the doughnuts soak up fat and turn greasy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre is cooked.

“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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