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Crullers

Sweet fried cakes made from a dough of butter, sugar, eggs, milk and spice, twisted or cut into shapes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the twisted crullers

  1. Rub ½ cup of butter into some flour.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of saleratus, 1 lb of moist sugar, and spice to taste.

  3. Beat 10 eggs with 1 teacup of milk.

  4. Stir the beaten eggs into the dry ingredients, using enough flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Roll out the dough thinly, cut into long strips, and twist them.

  6. Melt lard in a frying pan and fry the crullers until they are a pale brown.

Make the cut crullers

  1. In a bowl, beat ½ cup each of butter and sugar to a cream.

  2. Mix in the beaten yolks of 3 eggs.

  3. Quickly beat in ½ cup of flour and 1 teaspoon each of powdered cinnamon and grated nutmeg.

  4. Beat in enough cold milk to form a stiff paste.

  5. Beat the whites of 3 eggs to a stiff froth and gently stir into the paste.

  6. Roll out the mixture ½ inch thick and cut into shapes.

  7. Fry the crullers in plenty of hot fat until brown.

  8. Serve hot or cold, dusted 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 + 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 structure, richness and moisture to the crullers.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure, which holds the shape through frying.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown during frying.
Saleratus
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crullers rise and stay light.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and form a workable dough.

The step that matters

Frying in plenty of hot fat. If the fat is too cool, the dough soaks up grease and turns heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Enough hot fat keeps the crullers crisp and cooked through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

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