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Dessert

Soda Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with flour, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and hot fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soda Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  2. Rub the cream of tartar into the flour.

  3. Combine the flour mixture with the milk, eggs, sugar, and cinnamon. Mix until smooth.

Fry

  1. Heat the fat in a deep pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provides the structure that holds the doughnuts together as they fry.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to release gas, lightening the dough.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with the baking soda, helping the doughnuts rise.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter and helping it set.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, and dissolves the baking soda into the batter.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy instead of golden and light.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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