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Dessert

Mother's Crullers

A sweet fried dough pastry made with butter, sugar, eggs, sour milk, soda, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mother's Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the sour milk or cream and the dissolved soda.

  4. Add the nutmeg and cinnamon.

  5. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Cut into shapes.

  3. Fry the shapes in hot lard 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and tenderness to the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Sour milk or cream
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to lighten the dough.

The step that matters

Fry the shapes in hot lard until golden brown. Frying at a steady hot temperature sets the outside quickly and browns it, while keeping the inside cooked without greasy absorption. Oil that is too cool lets the dough soak up fat and turn heavy.

“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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