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Dessert

Norwegian Doughnuts

A sweet yeast doughnut made with butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, yeast, milk, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Norwegian Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Whisk the eggs.

  4. Mix the whisked eggs gradually with the yeast and enough milk to make a soft dough.

  5. Cover the dough.

  6. Let it rise in a warm place.

Fry and dry

  1. Shape the dough into balls or desired forms.

  2. Drop the shaped dough into a saucepan of boiling lard.

  3. Fry until golden brown.

  4. Place the fried doughnuts on a sieve to dry.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and sets when fried.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, binding the dough with the milk and yeast.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and gives a rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.

The step that matters

Let it rise in a warm place. Yeast needs time and gentle warmth to ferment and produce gas. If the dough does not rise enough, the doughnuts will be dense and heavy after frying.

“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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