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Dessert

Crullers

Crullers are fried pastries made from a thick batter of milk, sugar, eggs, baking powder, butter, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine milk and sugar.

  2. Add beaten egg whites and yolks, baking powder, butter, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a thick paste.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut into shapes.

  2. Drop shapes into boiling lard or beef fat.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, with the beaten whites adding lightness to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crullers puff and become light.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the dough tenderness and a richer flavor.
Flour
Forms the thick paste that gives the crullers their body and shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried exterior turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Drop shapes into boiling lard or beef fat. The fat must be hot enough to seal the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the dough absorbs oil, becomes greasy, and cooks unevenly before it browns.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, butter, 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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