Skip to main content
Dessert

Crullers

Crullers are fried dough squares cut into long strips, flavored with sugar, milk, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat together the eggs, sugar, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk, spices, and baking powder, then mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour, kneading until the dough is stiff enough to roll out to ¼ inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into squares and make 3 or 4 long incisions in each square.

  2. Lift the squares by taking alternate strips between your fingers and thumbs.

  3. Drop the crullers into hot 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its stiff, rollable structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the crullers rise and lighten as they fry.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.

The step that matters

Drop the crullers into hot lard and fry until golden brown.. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil instead of searing quickly, leaving greasy, heavy crullers. Frying until golden brown ensures the centre is cooked through.

“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.

More crullers recipes

French 5Pastry 4Delicate 3New York 3Plain 3 See all 103 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes