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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

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

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

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Combine 1 cup sugar, 3 cups milk, and 1 cup yeast in a bowl. Let stand overnight.

  2. Add 1 cup sugar, ½ cup butter, 3 eggs, 4 teaspoons nutmeg, and 4 teaspoons baking soda to the mixture.

  3. Sift in flour until the dough is stiff.

Shape and fry

  1. Let the dough rise again.

  2. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  3. Let the shaped dough rise until light.

  4. Fry until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that lightens the dough so it rises.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape while frying.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and gives a softer crumb.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and helps form the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its stiff, elastic structure.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Frying at the right heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the inside cooks through. Too cool and the doughnuts absorb oil and turn greasy; too hot and they brown before the centre is cooked.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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