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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with yeast, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and flour, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a sponge with warm water or milk and yeast; let it become very light.

  2. Add butter or lard, sugar, salt, baking soda dissolved in water, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and enough sifted flour to achieve biscuit dough consistency.

  4. Knead the dough well, cover, and let it rise.

Shape, rise and fry

  1. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick and cut into small shapes or strips.

  2. Place on greased tins, cover, and let rise again before frying.

  3. Fry in very hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar while warm.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the sponge and dough light and risen.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough, helping it hold its shape.
Butter or sweet lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Sifted flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once bound with eggs and liquid.

The step that matters

Fry in very hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. Too hot and the outside browns before the inside cooks 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.

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