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Dessert

Kaised Doughnuts

A yeast-based doughnut made with milk, sugar, yeast, salt, flour, and fried in lard and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kaised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine milk, sugar, yeast, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a thick batter, then let rise overnight.

  3. In the morning, add flour until dough is thick enough to roll out to about 1 inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut dough into squares about 1.5 inches.

  2. While frying, stretch the squares out longer as they drop into hot lard and suet.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough overnight so it rises and becomes light.
Flour
Thickens the mixture into a batter and then a rollable dough that gives the doughnuts structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and yeast and adds richness.
Lard and suet
Fat for frying that conducts heat and browns the outside of the doughnuts.

The step that matters

Frying the stretched squares in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb oil and turn greasy instead of browning quickly. Hot fat sets the outside fast so the dough puffs and stays light inside.

“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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