Name: Mother’s Crullers
Ingredients: 1 teacup sugar; 1 teacup sour cream or milk; ½ cup butter; 1 egg; 1 small teaspoon baking soda dissolved in hot water; Flour to roll out a tolerably stiff paste

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mother’s Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

Mix sugar, sour cream or milk, butter, egg, and baking soda in a bowl.
Gradually add flour until a stiff paste forms.
Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

Fry and serve

Heat lard in a kettle until a small piece rises to the surface almost instantly.
Fry the crullers in hot lard until golden yellow.
Let them cool before serving.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg: Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the crullers.
Sour cream or milk: Adds moisture and tenderness to the dough.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic dairy to help the crullers rise and lighten.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown as they fry.

The step that matters

Check the lard temperature before frying. If the lard is too cool, the crullers absorb grease and turn heavy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. A test piece of dough that rises quickly and sizzles steadily shows the fat is ready.

“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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Mother’s Crullers