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Dessert

Light Doughnuts

Light doughnuts made with milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, yeast, and flour, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Light Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine warmed milk, sugar, butter, and grated nutmeg in a large bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to create a sponge and mix in the yeast.

  3. Cover and let the mixture sit overnight.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the dough into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove and drain on paper towels.

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. Milk + buttertop 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

Yeast
Ferments the sponge overnight, producing gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the sponge and provides the structure that holds the risen dough together.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer crumb and more tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and feeds the yeast.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls of dough. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Holding the lard at a steady frying temperature gives a light, evenly cooked doughnut.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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