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Dessert

Yankee Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with sugar, egg, buttermilk, butter, spices, and baking soda and powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Yankee Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the sugar and melted butter together.

  2. Add the beaten egg(s) and buttermilk with dissolved baking soda.

  3. Mix in the salt, spices, and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the dough with a doughnut cutter.

  2. Fry in deep fat until golden brown 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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown as they fry.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with the baking soda to help the dough rise.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas and lighten the dough.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift so the doughnuts rise in the fryer.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together.

The step that matters

Frying in deep fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy before they cook through.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, buttermilk, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, 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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