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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast‑raised doughnut boiled in lard, made with sugar, butter, lard, milk, eggs, nutmeg, yeast, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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. In the morning, mix the yeast, milk, eggs, lard, nutmeg, and half the sugar to form a stiff batter with flour.

  2. At noon, add the remaining sugar and knead into a soft dough.

  3. Set the dough in a warm place to rise until ready to boil the next morning.

Fry

  1. Boil the doughnuts in lard.

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. Butter + milktop 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
Add richness and structure, helping the dough set and hold its shape.
Baker's yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, leavening the dough so it becomes light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the finished doughnuts.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Lard
Adds fat to the dough and serves as the frying medium for the doughnuts.
Milk
Provides moisture and protein that help form the dough and add softness.

The step that matters

Rising the dough in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas steadily. If the dough is too cold, the rise is slow and the doughnuts turn out dense; if too hot, the yeast can overwork and the dough may sour or collapse.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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