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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with butter or lard, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and flour, fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a sponge with warm water or milk and yeast.

  2. When the sponge is light, add butter or lard, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

  3. Stir in enough sifted flour to form a biscuit dough consistency.

  4. Knead the dough well, cover, and let it rise.

Shape, fry and finish

  1. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick and cut into shapes.

  2. Place on greased tins, cover, and let rise again.

  3. Fry in very hot lard until golden.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar while warm.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, giving the doughnuts their body once it is kneaded and fried.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light and airy.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough, adding structure and a tender crumb.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour through the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is too cool, doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy and oily. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady, very hot fat seals the surface quickly so the inside cooks and stays 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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