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Dessert

Dough Nuts

A fried doughnut made from flour, butter, sugar, egg, baking soda, and milk, topped with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Dough Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour and baking soda together.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture and enough milk to form a stiff dough.

  5. Roll out the dough thinly.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut into rounds and join two rounds together with a little jam, or cut into rings.

  2. Heat a pan of deep fat.

  3. Fry the doughnuts until golden brown, then drain on paper towels.

Finish

  1. Sift sugar over the doughnuts before serving.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once shaped and fried.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich in texture.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter become light and fluffy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help it rise and lighten as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying in hot fat cooks the centre through while browning the outside. Fat that is too cool soaks into the dough and gives greasy doughnuts, while fat that is too hot browns the outside before the inside is cooked.

“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.

More doughnuts recipes

Raised 110Plain 25Potato 18German 17Isle of Wight 16Sour Milk 14 See all 168 →

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