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Dessert

Cream Crullers

A fried dough treat made with sugar, cream, eggs, baking powder, flour, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, cream, eggs, and baking powder.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is soft enough to roll out.

  3. Cut the dough into desired shapes.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan until very hot and fry the crullers 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 richness and structure as they set in the frying fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crullers puff and stay light.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the dough a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crullers brown in the hot lard.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together for rolling and shaping.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not very hot, the crullers absorb more fat and turn greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly and crisp outside. Hot fat sets the outer surface fast, so the inside cooks through without the dough soaking up oil.

“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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