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Dessert

Gingerbread, Cookies, Doughnuts

A gingerbread dough made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, chocolate, flour, cinnamon, salt, and boiled water, then fried and rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Gingerbread, Cookies, Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix sugar, butter, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add milk and baking soda.

  3. Stir in melted chocolate.

Make the dough

  1. Sift flour with cinnamon and salt.

  2. Gradually add the sifted flour mixture to the batter to form a soft dough.

  3. Stir in boiling water lightly.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut dough with a round cutter about 1 inch in diameter.

  3. Fry doughnuts in deep fat until golden brown.

  4. Roll fried doughnuts in sugar.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the finished pieces a tender, browned surface.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives the dough richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients and add structure to the dough.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the dough together.
Baking soda
Acts as a leavening agent that helps the dough rise and lighten.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, soft batter.

The step that matters

Frying at the right temperature. Oil that is too cool lets the dough soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the inside cooks through. Steady heat gives a golden exterior and a fully cooked centre.

“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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