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Dessert

Puff Ball Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from a batter of eggs, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puff Ball Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light.

  2. Add the sweet milk, salt, nutmeg, and baking powder.

  3. Gradually mix in enough flour until the mixture is thick enough for a spoon to stand upright.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot lard.

  2. Fry 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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold its shape while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the doughnuts puff and rise in the hot fat.
Flour
Provides the structure that thickens the batter so it holds its shape when dropped.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning as the surface fries to golden.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of puffing. Fat that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks. Both matter because the batter is cooked entirely by the frying fat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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