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Dessert

Snow Ball Doughnuts

A doughnut made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, and flour, fried and coated in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Snow Ball Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, melted butter, eggs, sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt until well combined.

  2. Add enough flour to make a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut with a small round cutter.

Fry and coat

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan and fry the doughnuts until golden brown.

  2. Remove from lard and quickly roll each doughnut in fine white sugar.

  3. Place the coated doughnuts carefully on a plate.

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. 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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the frying lard.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, giving the doughnut a softer crumb and richer flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the doughnuts rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Remove from lard and quickly roll each doughnut in fine white sugar. Sugar sticks best to a hot, freshly fried surface, which is still slightly oily. If the doughnut cools first, the coating will not adhere well and can fall off.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, cream. 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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