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Dessert

Old-fashioned Yankee Doughnuts

A yeast-leavened doughnut made with milk, sugar, lard, eggs, and spices, fried and rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Yankee Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine yeast and milk in a bowl.

  2. Stir in enough flour to form a batter.

  3. Let the batter rise overnight.

  4. Add sugar, lard, eggs, baking soda, and more flour to make a soft dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until very light.

  6. Add nutmeg or cinnamon to taste.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Cut into doughnut shapes.

  3. Let the doughnuts stand on a board until light.

  4. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown.

  5. Roll the warm doughnuts in sugar.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Flour
Forms the batter and dough structure that holds the gas bubbles.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough and give it structure.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries the heat during frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, rolled on warm doughnuts, a sweet crust.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the dough to produce gas for extra lift.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy and oily; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Steady heat gives a light, evenly cooked result.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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