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
Rub the butter into the flour.
Add the sugar, eggs, yeast, and enough milk to form a stiff paste.
Let the mixture rise.
Shape and fry
Roll it out and cut into shapes with a cutter.
Boil the pieces in lard until they are a nice brown color.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough that holds the shaped pieces together.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a richer texture.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness to the dough and help bind it.
- Yeast
- Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and feeds the yeast during rising.
The step that matters
Boil the pieces in lard until they are a nice brown color. Frying in hot fat cooks the outside quickly, setting the surface and driving browning reactions. If the fat is too cool, the doughnuts absorb grease and turn heavy and oily instead of crisp and golden.
“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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