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Dessert

Dough Nuts with Jam

A fried doughnut filled with jam, dusted with sugar.

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 ↓

Dough Nuts with Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and sugar.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add baking powder and enough egg to form a stiff dough.

  4. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and roll it out thinly.

  5. Cut the dough into small rounds.

Fill and fry

  1. Place a little jam on half of the rounds and cover with the other rounds.

  2. Dampen the edges and press them together firmly.

  3. Heat oil in a pan and fry the doughnuts for about four minutes until golden.

  4. Remove from oil, place on a dish, and sift sugar over them.

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 dough and gives a rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not dampened and pressed firmly, they can separate in hot oil, letting jam leak out and oil soak in. A tight seal keeps the filling inside while the dough cooks.

“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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