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Dessert

German Doughnuts

A yeast‑free doughnut made with milk, eggs, butter, flour, and fried in 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.

  2. Pour the hot milk over 1 pint of flour.

  3. Beat until smooth.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

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

  7. Add more flour until the mixture forms a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your board.

  2. Turn the dough onto the board.

  3. Roll it into pieces as thick as your finger.

  4. Shape them into rings.

  5. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed with the hot milk and eggs.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the dough and whites, folded in, lighten its texture.
Milk
Hot milk scalds the flour, softening it and adding moisture to the dough.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives the doughnuts richness.

The step that matters

Frying in plenty of boiling lard. Lard must be hot and deep enough that the doughnuts float and fry quickly. If the fat is too cool, the dough absorbs grease and becomes heavy and oily instead of browning crisply.

“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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