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Quick Doughnuts

A quick doughnut recipe using sugar, sweet milk, egg, baking powder, and flour, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Quick Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, sweet milk, and egg until well combined.

  2. Add baking powder and gradually incorporate flour until the dough is thin enough to roll.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. 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 + 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. Milk + eggtop 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown golden in the hot oil.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the dough moist.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure and richness to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas as the dough heats, helping the doughnuts rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the dough its body and shape.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady heat gives an even, golden, lightly crisp exterior.

“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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