Skip to main content
Dessert

Doughnuts From Potato Starter

A doughnut made from a batter of potato starter, eggs, milk, and flour, fried in lard and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Doughnuts From Potato Starter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix warm water and potato starter to make a batter.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the batter along with the milk and salt.

  3. Gradually add flour until you have a medium soft dough.

  4. Rub in the butter and add the lemon zest, then work the dough well.

  5. Let the dough rise in a pan.

Shape and fry

  1. Take small pieces of dough, shape them, roll them out, and cut into strips.

  2. Twist the strips and let them rise on a board for a while.

  3. Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Potato starter
Ferments the batter and gives the dough a light, airy rise.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape while frying.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy. Too hot, and the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes