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Dessert

Doughnuts That Are Doubly Good

A fried doughnut made from risen bread dough, sugar, eggs, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Doughnuts That Are Doubly Good

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine the risen bread dough with sugar, eggs, and melted Cottolene in a bowl.

  2. Mix nutmeg or cinnamon with ¼ cup flour, then add the mixture to the dough.

  3. Incorporate enough additional flour to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll out the dough and cut it into shapes.

Fry

  1. Let the doughnuts rise for 30 minutes.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in deep, hot Cottolene.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Risen bread dough
Provides the yeasted base and light, airy crumb of the doughnut.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the dough hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.
Cottolene
Adds fat for tenderness and carries heat evenly during deep frying.
Flour
Builds the stiff dough structure that holds the cut shapes.

The step that matters

Frying in deep, hot Cottolene. If the fat is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives an even, golden result.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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