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Dessert

Potato Doughnuts

A fried dough made from mashed potatoes, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the mashed potatoes, shortening, sugar, eggs, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg until well combined.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable and not sticky.

  3. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about ½ inch thick.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut into doughnut shapes and fry in hot oil 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. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, keeping the dough tender and soft after frying.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the doughnuts rise and stay light.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Adding flour gradually. Too much flour makes the dough dense and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape. Adding it slowly lets you stop once the dough is manageable, keeping the doughnuts light and tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, nutmeg, 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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