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Dessert

Crullers

Crullers are fried dough pastries made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, baking powder, nutmeg, and flour, served golden brown.

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 ↓

Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, melted butter, sweet milk, baking powder, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Gradually stir in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the dough into the hot lard.

  3. 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. 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the frying fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown in the hot lard.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture so the flour can form a dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crullers rise and lighten as they fry.
Flour
Provides the structure that makes the dough stiff enough to drop into the fat.

The step that matters

Dropping the dough into hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Heating the lard first lets the outside set quickly so the crullers brown and stay light.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

More crullers recipes

French 5Pastry 4Delicate 3New York 3Plain 3 See all 103 →

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