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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with sugar, flour, milk, butter, spices, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 dough

  1. Sift together sugar and flour in a large bowl.

  2. Warm the milk and butter together until melted.

  3. Add the warm milk mixture and spices to the flour mixture.

  4. Stir in the yeast and mix until a stiff dough forms.

  5. Cover the dough and let it rise for 4 to 5 hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard 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 + 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 gluten structure that holds the dough together and gives the doughnuts their body.
Active dry yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light and airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and contributes to its tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning during frying.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before shaping. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas for the dough to expand. Under-proofed dough stays dense and heavy, so the doughnuts will fry up tough rather than light.

“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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