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Dessert

Rich Dough-nuts

A sweet doughnut made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, yeast, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and optional rose water, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Rich Dough-nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cut the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and rose-water.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and pour them into the mixture.

  4. Stir in the yeast and gradually add the milk to form a soft dough.

  5. Cover the dough and let it rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into diamond shapes with a sharp knife.

  2. Fry the doughnuts in lard until golden brown.

  3. Grate loaf sugar over them when done.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the dough together.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the dough.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture to the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps form a soft, elastic dough.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas to lighten the dough. Under-proofed dough fries up dense and heavy, while over-proofed dough can collapse and absorb excess oil.

“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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