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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

Raised doughnuts are yeast-leavened doughnuts made with sweet milk, flour, sugar, butter, 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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Combine sweet milk and yeast in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to create a thick batter.

  3. Cover and let sit overnight.

Make and shape the dough

  1. In the morning, mix in sugar, butter, nutmeg or cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Add flour until the dough is rollable like biscuits.

  3. Knead the dough well.

  4. Let it rise until doubled in size.

  5. Roll out the dough and cut it into doughnut shapes.

  6. Allow them to rise again until light.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan.

  2. Fry the doughnuts 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the gas bubbles and gives the dough its body.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and feeds the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning in the fryer.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a richer flavor.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light before frying. Yeast gas must fully expand the dough so the doughnuts puff and stay airy. Underproofed dough stays dense and can turn greasy, while overproofed dough may collapse in the hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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