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Raised Doughnuts

Raised doughnuts made from light dough, butter, lard, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, fried in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Incorporate the butter and lard into the light dough.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the sugar.

  3. Combine the egg-sugar mixture with the dough and knead gently.

  4. Allow the dough to rise, then punch it down.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Let the doughnuts rise until very light.

  3. Fry in hot lard, adding cinnamon for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Butter and lard
Adds fat that gives the dough richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough and help it hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Light dough
Provides the yeast-raised base that rises to make the doughnuts light.

The step that matters

Let the doughnuts rise until very light. Under-proofed doughnuts stay dense and can puff poorly or absorb excess oil. Fully risen shapes hold gas and fry up light and airy.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar. 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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