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Dessert

Cocoa Crullers

Cocoa crullers are fried dough rings flavored with cocoa and cinnamon, rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cocoa Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add sugar, melted butter, and milk; mix well.

  3. Sift together flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon.

  4. Combine the liquid and dry ingredients, adding more flour as needed to form a soft dough.

  5. Cut the dough into rings or desired shapes, minimizing trimmings.

  6. Lay the cut crullers on a clean cloth and cover them.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry in deep, hot fat a few at a time, turning often.

  2. Once cooled, roll the crullers in powdered sugar.

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

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Add structure and richness, binding the dough and helping it hold its shape.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure of the dough once it is mixed with the liquids.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cruller brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the finished cruller.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the crullers rise and become light.

The step that matters

Fry in deep, hot fat a few at a time. If the fat is not hot enough, crullers absorb excess oil and turn greasy; crowding the pan drops the fat temperature further, so fry only a few at once and turn them often for even browning.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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