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Dessert

Potato Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from mashed potatoes, sweet milk, eggs, sugar, baking powder, butter, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Potato Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the mashed potatoes, sweet milk, eggs, granulated sugar, baking powder, butter, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff.

  3. Roll the dough into doughnut shapes.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Roll the cooked doughnuts in pulverized sugar before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and body, keeping the doughnuts tender and soft inside.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure so the doughnuts hold their shape while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and become light in texture.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown evenly in the hot oil.
Flour
Provides the structure that stiffens the dough so it can be rolled and shaped.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is too cool, doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives a light, evenly cooked result.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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