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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

Plain doughnuts made from a soft dough of milk, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine sweet milk, sugar, salt, and beaten eggs in a bowl; stir well.

  2. Add baking powder to the flour and mix into the wet ingredients until a soft dough forms.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep dish until hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of dough the size of an English walnut into the hot lard.

  3. Carefully turn the doughnuts until they are well browned.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the doughnuts.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the soft dough structure that holds the doughnuts together while frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot fat.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the dough soft.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of dough into the hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the doughnut puffs and browns evenly.

“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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