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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

Plain doughnuts are small fried sweet pastries made from flour, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub together the flour, sugar, and butter.

  2. Add the baking powder and a pinch of nutmeg.

  3. Form the mixture into a ball and make a hole in the center.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat oil in a pan and fry the doughnut for five minutes until golden.

  2. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle thickly with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it is shaped and fried.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the dough a tender, crumbly texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnut rise and lighten as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Fry at the right heat until golden. If the oil is too cool, the doughnut absorbs excess oil and turns greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady heat gives an evenly cooked, golden result.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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