Why it works: Beef and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Crullers and Doughnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Render the suet
Prepare the beef suet by cutting it into small pieces and placing it in a pot with 1 pint of water.
Heat the pot and stir frequently for about 3 hours until the suet is fully rendered.
Drain the rendered suet through a coarse towel and let it cool in pans or jars.
Shape and fry
Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into desired shapes.
Heat the rendered suet until it stops bubbling, then carefully drop in the dough pieces.
Fry for 5 to 8 minutes, checking for doneness by breaking one open.
Once cooked, drain the doughnuts in a skimmer and place them in a colander.
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.
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Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,305 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef suet
- Provides the fat in which the crullers are fried, giving them a rich flavour and crisp surface.
- Dough
- Forms the body of the crullers, setting and browning as it fries in hot fat.
The step that matters
Heating the rendered suet before frying. The fat must be hot enough, and stop bubbling as it reaches frying heat, so the dough sets quickly. If the fat is too cool, the crullers absorb more grease and turn heavy and oily.
“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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