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Whole-wheat Doughnuts

A sweet doughnut made with whole-wheat flour, sugar, sweet milk, butter, baking powder, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Whole-wheat Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, sweet milk, melted butter, baking powder, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Add enough whole-wheat flour to form a dough that is thick enough to roll out.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry the doughnuts until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Roll the fried doughnuts in 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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + wheattop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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

Whole-wheat flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together so it can be rolled and cut.
Baking powder
Releases gas as the dough heats, helping the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried exterior brown.
Melted butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Frying 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 if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, wheat, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, wheat, flour. 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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