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Dessert

Dough Nuts, American

A fried doughnut made with flour, butter, allspice, milk, eggs, and sugar, dusted with sifted 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, American

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour until crumbly.

  2. Add the allspice and sugar, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk and add to the flour mixture.

  4. Knead until smooth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Shape and fry

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

  2. Heat oil or lard in a saucepan until boiling.

  3. Fry the dough shapes until golden brown, about 5-6 minutes.

  4. Drain on a moistened sieve and dust with sifted sugar.

  5. Store in a dry place.

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 + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed with liquid and kneaded.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the dough.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and colour to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. The rise depends on yeast or gas-producing leavening, and the dough needs to be warm and fully risen for a light texture. Under-proofed dough fries up dense and heavy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg. 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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