Name: Walnut Hill's Doughnuts
Ingredients: 1 cup sour cream or milk; 2 cups sugar; 1 cup butter; 4 eggs; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; Flour (enough to make a stiff dough); Lard (for frying)

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Walnut Hill's Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

In a large bowl, combine sour cream or milk, sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
Beat the mixture well, then gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll.

Shape and fry

Roll out the dough and cut it into diamond shapes.
Fry the doughnuts in hot lard 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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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 frying.
Flour: Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and hold its diamond shape.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour cream to release gas, helping the doughnuts rise.
Sour cream or milk: Adds moisture and tenderness to the dough.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Sugar: Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be added gradually until the dough is just stiff enough to roll. Too little flour leaves a sticky dough that is hard to cut and absorbs excess fat when fried; too much makes the doughnuts tough and dense.

“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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Walnut Hill's Doughnuts