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Doughnuts “never Fail”

A fried doughnut made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, sweet milk, salt, nutmeg, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Doughnuts “never Fail”

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the sugar with the butter.

  2. Add the egg yolks and beat for three to four minutes.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Mix in enough flour to handle along with the baking powder.

Fry and drain

  1. Cut out the doughnuts before frying in deep fat.

  2. Once fried, place them on paper to cool and absorb excess fat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown lightly when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and builds the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be handled and cut.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and lighten when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in deep fat. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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