Skip to main content
Dessert

German Doughnuts

Jam-filled doughnuts made from wheat meal, yeast, egg, cinnamon, sugar, and milk, fried until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

German Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm milk.

  2. Mix all ingredients, adding the dissolved yeast and enough milk to make the dough moist enough to handle.

  3. Let the dough rise for 1.5 hours in a warm place.

Shape and fill

  1. Roll out the dough to 4 inches thick and cut out round pieces.

  2. Place a little jam or marmalade in the center of each piece, then close up the dough to form the doughnuts.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the doughnuts in boiling oil or vegetable butter until brown and thoroughly cooked.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Wheat meal
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, making the dough light and airy.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast so the dough becomes soft and workable.

The step that matters

Frying the doughnuts until thoroughly cooked. The outside browns quickly in hot oil while the dough inside needs time to cook through. Frying at a steady, hot temperature lets the centre set without the surface darkening too early or absorbing excess oil.

“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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesWheat MuffinsWheat Muffins48 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhole Wheat MuffinsWhole Wheat Muffins12 recipes