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Dessert

Common Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from a sweet batter of milk, eggs, sugar, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Common Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add milk, salt, spices, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  3. Gradually add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out to ½ inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into circles or long pieces, then twist.

  2. Fry in boiling lard 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 richness and structure to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be rolled and shaped.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard until golden brown. Oil or lard must be hot enough to seal the surface quickly and cook the centre through. If it is too cool, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks.

“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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