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Dessert

Crullers and Doughnuts

A sweet dough made with butter, sugar, flour, and baking powder, shaped into crullers or doughnuts and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crullers and Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Warm the flour slightly.

  3. Mix the flour gradually with the butter and sugar by hand.

  4. Knead the mixture until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Press the dough into sheets ½ inch thick on a molding board. Do not roll it out.

  2. Cut into desired shapes.

  3. Prick or stamp a pattern on top.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the crullers a tender, short texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped dough together while it bakes.
Sugar
Creams with the butter and adds sweetness, and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the crullers rise and become light.

The step that matters

Knead until just well combined. Overworking dough that contains flour develops gluten, which makes baked pastry tough and dense rather than tender.

“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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