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Dessert

Cocoa Crullers

A fried dough ring coated in powdered sugar, flavored with cocoa and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cocoa Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add sugar, melted butter, and milk; mix well.

  3. Sift together flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon.

  4. Combine the liquid and dry ingredients; add more flour to make a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into rings or desired shapes.

  2. Cut out all crullers before frying and lay them on a clean cloth, covering them.

  3. Fry in deep, hot fat a few at a time, turning often.

  4. Roll in powdered sugar after cooling.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 as they set in the fat.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the crullers together once fried.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the crullers puff and lighten.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and forms a soft dough.

The step that matters

Fry in deep, hot fat a few at a time. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the cruller absorbs less oil and stays light. Crowding the pan drops the fat temperature, causing greasy, dense results that brown unevenly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, cinnamon. 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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