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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast‑raised doughnut made with milk, water, eggs, sugar, butter, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift 2 cups of flour into a bowl.

  2. Add salt and sugar.

  3. Scald the milk.

  4. Add 1 cup of water and the butter.

  5. Dissolve the yeast cake in ½ cup of warm water.

  6. Stir the dissolved yeast into the milk and water mixture.

  7. Combine the mixture with the flour.

  8. Stir in the beaten eggs.

  9. Add enough flour to make a soft dough that can be handled.

Rise and shape

  1. Mix the dough at noon.

  2. Let the dough rise until night.

  3. Knead the dough down.

  4. Let the dough rise until morning.

  5. Roll out the dough.

  6. Cut the dough into shapes.

  7. Let the shaped dough stand until light.

Fry

  1. Fry the doughnuts in hot fat 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and lets it hold its shape.
Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and turn light and airy.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and moisture to the dough, helping it set when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness and a tender crumb to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the finished doughnut.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning to the doughnuts.

The step that matters

Let the shaped dough stand until light. Under-proofing leaves doughnuts dense and greasy after frying, while over-proofing can collapse them. The dough should look airy before it goes into the fat.

“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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