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Dessert

Doughnuts Without Eggs

A yeast doughnut made without eggs, using milk, flour, sugar, butter, yeast, baking soda, spices, and fried in lard.

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 ↓

Doughnuts Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk and let it cool until tepid.

  2. Add the sugar, butter, yeast, and baking soda to the milk.

  3. Pour this mixture into the center of the flour, using enough flour to make a sponge.

  4. Let the sponge rise overnight in a warm place.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, add your desired spices and knead in the remaining flour.

  2. Let the dough rise again until light.

  3. Knead the dough again and roll it out.

  4. Cut out the doughnuts and let them stand for 5 minutes.

  5. Fry the doughnuts in boiling lard.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it trap gas.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its proteins help give the dough a tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the sponge and dough rise and turn light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and some browning.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the dough to release gas and add lift.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb grease and turn heavy and oily; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives an even, light fry.

“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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