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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

Plain doughnuts are fried dough pieces made from flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, eggs, milk, and flavored with nutmeg or cinnamon.

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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and enough sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Flavor the dough with nutmeg or cinnamon.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough into boiling lard and fry 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the doughnuts a tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown during frying.

The step that matters

Frying the dough spoonfuls in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough that the dough sets and browns quickly on the outside. If the fat is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy before they cook through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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