Name: Good Recipe for Doughnuts
Ingredients: 1½ cups sugar; 1½ cups sour or buttermilk; 2 eggs; ½ cup lard; 1 large teaspoon baking powder; soda to sweeten the milk; flour to incorporate the whole; salt to taste; spice to taste

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Good Recipe for Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

In a bowl, mix sugar, sour or buttermilk, and lard until well combined.
Add eggs and baking powder, then mix thoroughly.
Incorporate enough flour to form a dough.
Add soda, salt, and spices to taste.

Fry and store

Shape the dough into doughnuts and fry until golden brown.
Store warm doughnuts in a tin cake box to keep them fresh.

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.

Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,973 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).