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Dessert

Doughnuts with Baking Powder

A sweet doughnut made with baking powder, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, and optional cinnamon or lemon flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 with Baking Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, whip together the sugar, butter, and eggs.

  2. Add the milk and flavoring, mixing well.

  3. Sift the baking powder and flour together, then mix into the wet ingredients.

  4. Roll out the dough to your desired thickness.

Fry and finish

  1. Cut with a doughnut cutter and fry in hot grease.

  2. Dip in granulated sugar and sprinkle with cinnamon.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the doughnut together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and helps form the dough.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot grease. If the fat is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady, moderate heat lets the dough puff and cook evenly.

“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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