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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

A simple doughnut made with egg, sugar, sweet milk, butter, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the sugar and sweet milk.

  2. Add the melted butter, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and fry in hot oil 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the dough rise.
Baking soda
Alkaline leavener that produces gas with the acid to lighten the dough.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and 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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