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Raised Doughnuts

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Add the milk and strain the mixture.

  3. Mix in the butter and yeast to form a sponge.

  4. Add flour to create a stiff batter.

  5. Let the batter rise until light.

  6. Incorporate the sugar, eggs, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  7. Add more flour to achieve a stiff consistency like biscuit dough.

  8. Let the dough rise until very light.

  9. Pour the dough onto a board without kneading and flatten it with your hands.

  10. Cut the dough into squares and let them rise until very light again.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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