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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A sweet yeast doughnut made with mashed potatoes, milk, sugar, eggs, butter, and flour, then fried and rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes, then stir them into the boiling milk, salt, and sugar.

  2. Set aside until lukewarm.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and dissolved yeast, then let the mixture rise until light.

  4. Incorporate the butter and enough flour to form a dough.

  5. Let the dough rise in a warm place for about 4 hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut with a small round cutter.

  2. Let the cut dough rise again.

  3. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown.

  4. Roll in sugar when done.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potatoes
Adds starch and moisture, helping the dough stay soft and tender.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the dough bind and hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the dough and gives a richer flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas and make the dough light. If the dough is underproofed, the doughnuts will be dense; the rise is what gives them their airy texture.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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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