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Dessert

Mother's Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, milk, flour, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Mother's Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, melted butter, eggs, baking powder, sweet milk, and salt.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture is soft.

  3. Flavor with nutmeg.

  4. Dust a surface with ½ cup flour and roll out the dough.

Fry and finish

  1. Cut into doughnut shapes and fry until golden.

  2. After frying, roll the doughnuts in 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 + nutmegtop 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.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, giving the doughnuts lift and a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and adds a crisp, sweet coating when rolled after frying.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and forms a soft dough.

The step that matters

Frying until golden. Oil that is too cool lets the dough absorb grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks through. Steady heat gives a light, evenly cooked doughnut.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

More doughnuts recipes

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

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