Skip to main content
Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast‑leavened doughnut made from lard, flour, sugar, salt, yeast, milk, water, and eggs, then fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

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

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine lard, flour, sugar, salt, ½ cup compressed yeast, warm milk, warm water, and beaten eggs.

  2. Knead the mixture into a soft dough and let it rise overnight.

Shape and rise

  1. The next morning, knead the dough again and roll it out to about 1 inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough into biscuit shapes and let them rise on the board for 2 hours.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the doughnuts in boiling lard until brown.

  2. Once cooled, dip the doughnuts in powdered sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, leavening the dough so it becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and colour well.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps it brown gently.
Lard
Enriches the dough with fat for tenderness and serves as the frying fat for browning.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, helping the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts in boiling lard until brown. Frying at a steady, correct heat lets the outside brown just as the centre cooks through. Oil that is too hot browns the surface while the middle stays raw, and oil that is too cool soaks in fat and gives greasy, heavy doughnuts.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes