Skip to main content
Dessert

Crullers

A sweet fried dough treat made with butter, powdered sugar, eggs, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the butter and powdered sugar thoroughly.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out to ¼ inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into squares and make three or four long incisions in each square.

  2. Lift the squares by taking alternate strips between your fingers and thumbs.

  3. Drop the crullers into hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  4. Drain well and dip in 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the hot fat.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and dissolves into the butter for a smooth, tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that makes the dough stiff enough to roll and cut.

The step that matters

Drop the crullers into hot lard and fry until golden brown.. If the fat is too cool, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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.

More crullers recipes

French 5Pastry 4Delicate 3New York 3Plain 3 See all 103 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes