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Dessert

Drop Doughnuts

Drop doughnuts are fried dough balls made with sugar, milk, butter, eggs, nuts, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Drop Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, milk, butter, baking powder, salt, eggs, hickory nuts, almond extract, and flour.

  2. Sift the baking soda and baking powder into the last cup of flour and fold it in gently.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan and fry the dough immediately 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together while it fries.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add moisture and structure to the finished doughnuts.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the wet batter, helping the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas, adding lift and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it fries.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the dough soft.

The step that matters

Fry the dough immediately. Baking powder and baking soda start releasing gas as soon as the batter is wet, so waiting lets the doughnuts lose lift. Hot oil sets the outside quickly, so the centre cooks through without the dough soaking up grease.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, egg, almond, 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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