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Dessert

Doughnuts

A sweet fried dough made with mashed potatoes, yeast, flour, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Doughnuts

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 ↓

Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes in water until easily pricked with a fork, then mash them.

  2. Let the potato water cool to lukewarm, then dissolve the yeast cakes in it.

  3. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes, flour, salt, and sugar.

  4. Add the lukewarm water with dissolved yeast to the potato mixture and beat well.

  5. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place.

Enrich the dough

  1. Warm the sifted flour without allowing it to cook.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the heated and beaten eggs, milk, melted butter, sugar, and salt.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the risen dough and mix well.

  4. Grate nutmeg into the dough and mix again.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough to 1 inch thickness, cut with a doughnut cutter, and fry in deep hot fat until golden.

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. 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. Flour + nutmegtop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potatoes
Add moisture and softness to the dough, giving a tender crumb.
Yeast cakes
Ferment the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and tenderness to the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and helps browning in the fat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Fry in deep hot fat until golden. If the fat is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks. Steady, hot fat sets the outside quickly so the inside cooks through with little oil absorbed.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

More doughnuts recipes

Raised 110Plain 25Potato 18German 17Isle of Wight 16Sour Milk 14 See all 168 →

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