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Dessert

Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with sour cream, sugar, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Doughnuts

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sour cream, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla extract.

  2. Sift flour with baking powder and add to the mixture.

  3. Dissolve bicarbonate of soda in hot water and stir into the cream mixture.

  4. Mix until smooth using your hands or a wooden spoon.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan until hot; it should rise to the top when ready.

  2. Shape the dough and carefully drop into the hot lard.

  3. Fry until golden brown, then remove and drain on brown paper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vanilla + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the dough tender and reacts with the soda.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the doughnut shape while it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the doughnuts puff and stay light.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas for rising and light browning.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel flavour that helps browning.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until it is hot before frying. If the fat is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and becomes greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly and crisping on the outside.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, vanilla, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, 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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