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Dessert

Excellent Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with flour, butter, water, sugar, eggs, baking powder, and fried in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Excellent Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, water, sugar, eggs, and baking powder until well combined.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat the lard in a deep pan over high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the dough into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove the doughnuts and drain on paper towels.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and sets when fried.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown in the hot fat.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and lighten as they fry.

The step that matters

Keep the lard hot before frying. Oil that is too cool lets the doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks through.

“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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