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Dessert

German Doughnuts

German doughnuts are fried sweet pastries made from a batter of sugar, butter, eggs, milk, yeast, and flour, fried in lard.

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 ↓

German Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, melted butter, egg yolks, milk, and yeast cake.

  2. Add flour gradually until you achieve a soft batter.

  3. Cover and let the mixture rise overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, mix the batter until stiff and cut out shapes.

  2. Let the cut doughnuts rise again.

  3. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Yeast cake
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen dough together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and golden colour.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Steady heat gives a golden, fully cooked result.

“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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