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Dessert

Plain Doughnuts

A simple doughnut made from a soft dough of flour, milk, sugar, egg, and baking soda, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream together the sugar and coconut oil.

  2. Beat in the egg.

  3. Add the sour milk with the baking soda dissolved in it.

  4. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Let the dough rise for ten minutes before frying.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the doughnuts.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed fat stay soft and tender.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to lift the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas for rising.
Cottolene
Adds fat, which tenderises the dough and gives a softer crumb.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the dough together and lets it be rolled out.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in enough flour to form a soft dough. Adding flour gradually and stopping once the dough is soft prevents too much gluten from developing. Overworked or overfloured dough becomes dense and tough when fried.

“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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