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Dessert

The Boss Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with sugar, milk, butter, eggs, baking powder, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

The Boss Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, milk, melted butter, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add baking powder and salt, then gradually incorporate flour until the dough is soft but not sticky.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a soft dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once cooked.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides. If the oil is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady oil temperature gives even color and a fully cooked centre.

“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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