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Dessert

Raisin Spirals

A fried dough spiral made with eggs, sugar, butter, raisins, sour milk, baking soda, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Spirals

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your frying pan over medium heat.

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, butter, chopped raisins, sour milk, and baking soda.

  3. Add spices to taste and stir in enough flour to make a stiff dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into strips about 2 inches wide and 4 inches long.

  2. Roll the strips around your fingers to curl them.

  3. Fry the spirals in butter until they are a delicate brown.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with granulated sugar before serving.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps the spirals brown in the pan.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to give the dough lift.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown.
Chopped raisins
Add sweetness, chew and moisture throughout the dough.

The step that matters

Fry the spirals in butter until they are a delicate brown. Butter browns quickly because its milk solids darken at moderate heat, so the spirals can scorch before the centre cooks. Medium heat and a close watch keep the colour even and the dough cooked through.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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