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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast-leavened doughnut made with milk, butter, lard, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and flour, then fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the milk, then cool it.

  2. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water, then add to milk with salt and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  3. Let the batter rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. Add melted shortening, sugar, beaten eggs, nutmeg, and enough flour to make a stiff dough.

  2. Let the dough rise again; if too soft, add more flour.

  3. On a floured board, pat and roll the dough to ¾ inch thickness.

  4. Shape with a cutter and work between your hands until round.

  5. Place on a floured board, let rise for 1 hour, turn, and let rise again.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry in deep fat and drain on brown paper.

  2. Cool and roll 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough, and extra flour stiffens it when the dough is too soft.
Eggs
Add richness and structure to the dough and help it hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter and dough rise and turn light.
Butter and lard mixed
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter and dough.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise overnight. Yeast needs time to ferment and build gas and flavor; under-proofing leaves doughnuts dense, while the dough must stay stiff enough to hold its shape through frying.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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