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Dessert

Dough Nuts

A fried pastry made from yeast dough filled with jam and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 into a bowl.

  2. Rub in the butter and salt.

  3. Combine the yeast and caster sugar in another bowl.

  4. Cream until liquid.

  5. Beat the egg.

  6. Add the tepid milk.

  7. Pour the mixture onto the yeast and sugar.

  8. Stir the wet ingredients into the flour mixture.

  9. Beat well.

  10. Cover the dough.

  11. Let rise in a warm place for 2 hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Take a small piece of dough.

  2. Flatten it.

  3. Place some jam in the center.

  4. Roll the dough into a ball.

  5. Place the ball on a floured baking sheet.

  6. Let rise for a few minutes.

  7. Fry in boiling fat for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on size.

  8. Remove from fat.

  9. Sprinkle immediately with caster 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 + 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure, which traps gas and sets when fried.
German yeast
Produces gas during the rise, making the doughnuts light and airy.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, more tender texture.
Tepid milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and activates the yeast.
Castor sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the surface.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before shaping. Yeast gas expands the dough during the rise; if it is under-proofed the doughnuts stay dense and may be heavy after frying.

“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

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