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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast‑raised doughnut made with milk, sugar, lard, butter, eggs, and spices, then fried and rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 sponge

  1. Soak the compressed yeast in ½ cup of water.

  2. Add the milk and enough flour to make a thick batter.

  3. Set it in a warm place to rise.

Make and shape the dough

  1. When the batter is light, add the lard, butter, eggs, salt, nutmeg, and more flour to form a dough.

  2. Knead until smooth.

  3. Set the dough to rise until light.

  4. Roll it out to ½ inch thick and cut out doughnuts.

  5. Leave the doughnuts in a warm place to rise until perfectly light.

Fry and coat

  1. Fry the doughnuts in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. After frying, roll the doughnuts in sugar when they are cold.

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

Flour
Forms the batter and dough structure that traps gas and sets when fried.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its rise and browning.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a soft, short crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, giving richness and a softer texture to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.

The step that matters

Let the doughnuts rise until perfectly light before frying. Frying under-proofed dough gives dense, greasy doughnuts, because the yeast has not yet built enough gas to lighten the structure. Fully proofed dough expands and fries up light and even.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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