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Dessert

Crullers

Crullers are fried dough squares flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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. In a bowl, mix ½ cup melted butter and ½ cup sugar.

  2. Add 6 eggs and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll the dough thin and cut into squares.

Fry and serve

  1. Make 3 or 4 long incisions in each square.

  2. Lift the squares by alternating strips and drop them into hot lard.

  3. Fry until golden brown and drain well.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crullers.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the crullers their structure.

The step that matters

Lift the squares by alternating strips and drop them into hot lard. The incisions let the dough twist into its characteristic shape as it fries. If the lard is not hot enough, the crullers absorb grease and turn heavy and greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the mace

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

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

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