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Dessert

Doughnuts Without Yeast

A yeast‑free doughnut made from butter, sugar, egg, flour, baking powder, milk, and fried, then dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Doughnuts Without Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream butter and ½ cup sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add beaten egg and remaining ½ cup sugar, then beat again.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg if using.

  4. Add dry mixture alternately with milk to butter mixture, stirring until a soft dough forms.

  5. Roll out dough and cut into rings.

Fry and coat

  1. Fry doughnuts in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Roll fried doughnuts in powdered sugar.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the dough together.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the doughnuts their body.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour into a soft dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry doughnuts in hot oil until golden brown.. If the oil is too cool, doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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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