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Dessert

E Very-day Doughnuts

A simple fried doughnut made with flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

E Very-day Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, rub together the butter, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix until smooth.

  3. Sift the baking powder through the flour and gradually add it to the wet mixture.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a deep kettle and fry the doughnuts 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn light and airy.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Oil must be hot enough to set the outside quickly; if it is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. Frying until golden brown ensures the centre is cooked through.

“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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