Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

Plain doughnuts made from a sweet batter, fried in lard, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the powdered sugar, butter, and eggs together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add to the mixture, stirring until soft.

  4. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut with a round cutter, making a hole in the center.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Once done, roll the doughnuts 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that leavens the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the doughnuts their structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and creates a fine sugar coating on the finished doughnuts.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives a light, evenly cooked result.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes