Skip to main content
Dessert

Perfection Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with eggs, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, and flour, finished with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Perfection Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the butter, sugar, sweet milk, and salt.

  2. Sift in the baking powder and add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll the dough out rather thin and cut into doughnut shapes.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat the lard until very hot, then drop in the doughnuts.

  2. They will sink initially and then rise to the top; turn them when brown.

  3. Once golden brown on both sides, carefully lift them out and roll in powdered sugar while hot.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the fried surface brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough, giving the doughnuts their rise.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough structure that holds the doughnut shape.

The step that matters

Frying at the right heat. Lard must be very hot before the doughnuts go in. If it is too cool, the dough absorbs excess fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly and cooking through.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes