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Dessert

Connecticut Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with milk, sugar, butter, eggs, nutmeg, orange peel, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Connecticut Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in the milk.

  2. Mix all ingredients except eggs, spices, and orange peel with enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  3. Let the batter rise until light.

  4. At night, add the eggs, spices, and orange peel, and enough flour to knead it, but not too stiff.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Let the cut doughnuts stand for 2 hours before frying.

  3. Fry in a six-quart kettle with the cover on tight.

  4. Remove the cover during the second rising.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Builds the structure that holds the dough's shape and gas bubbles.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the dough's structure and texture.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.

The step that matters

Letting the cut doughnuts stand before frying. Resting lets the shaped dough rise again, trapping gas so the doughnuts puff and stay light in the hot fat. Frying too early can leave them dense and heavy.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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