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German Doughnuts

German doughnuts are fried dough rings made from milk, eggs, butter, flour, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

German Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the milk and pour it hot over 1 pint of flour. Beat until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites and add salt.

  4. Incorporate enough additional flour to form a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your work surface, turn the dough onto it, and roll it into pieces as thick as your finger, shaping them into rings.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in plenty of boiling 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Yolks and whites add richness and structure, helping the dough hold its shape while frying.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, hydrating the flour to form a tender dough.
Flour
Provides the main structure, setting into the dough's framework as it is worked and fried.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fry in plenty of hot lard until golden brown. Enough hot fat keeps the oil temperature steady so the doughnuts brown quickly on the outside while the inside cooks through. Crowded or cool fat makes them greasy and dense.

“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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