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Yankee Doughnuts, Raised
Heat a pint of milk just lukewarm, and stir into it a small cupful of melted lard, and sifted flour until it is a thick batter; add a small cupful of domestic yeast, and keep it warm until the batter is light; then work into it four beaten eggs, two cupfuls of sugar, rolled free from lumps, a teaspoonful of salt and two of cinnamon. When the whole is well mixed, knead in wheat flour until about as stiff as biscuit dough. Set it where it will keep warm until of a spongy lightness; then roll the dough out half an inch thick and cut it into cakes. Let them remain until light, then fry them in hot lard.
A straightforward yeast-raised doughnut built on a sponge, from the era when "domestic yeast" meant a homemade liquid barm kept in a crock. The conversions below are mostly about leavening and frying temperature.
- Domestic yeastA cupful of homemade liquid yeast (usually potato- or hop-based) supplied both leavening and moisture. Substitute about 2 teaspoons of instant or active dry yeast, and note that you lose roughly a cup of liquid from the formula, so the sponge will need less flour than the original implies.
- The sponge stageThe first step is a sponge, not a dough: a pint of milk, the melted fat, and enough flour to make a thick batter, left to ferment until bubbled and domed. Expect 45 to 90 minutes in a warm kitchen rather than the several hours a barm would have taken.
- Flour is unmeasured on purpose"Knead in wheat flour until about as stiff as biscuit dough" is the only guide given. Plan on roughly 5 to 7 cups total across the sponge and the dough; stop while it is still slightly tacky, since a stiff doughnut dough fries up dense and bready.
- Two cupfuls of sugarThat is a lot of sugar for a yeast dough and it will slow fermentation noticeably. The rises will take longer than an unsweetened bread dough, and the doughnuts will brown fast in the fat.
- Frying temperature"Hot lard" means 365-375F. Below that the dough drinks fat and goes heavy; above it, the high sugar content scorches the crust before the centre sets. A thermometer matters more here than the clock: about 1 minute per side.
- The proof after cuttingThe instruction to let the cut cakes "remain until light" is the hinge of the recipe. Give them 20 to 30 minutes on a floured cloth until visibly puffed and slow to spring back; underproofed rings fry up tough and greasy, and handling them roughly after proofing will deflate them.
- LardLard was both the shortening and the frying medium. Butter or shortening works in the dough; for the kettle, any neutral fat with a high smoke point will do, though lard gives the crisp, faintly savoury crust the recipe was written around.
- YieldAround three dozen cakes from a pint of milk. They are best within a few hours of frying and stale quickly.
Raised doughnuts are the older form: fried yeast dough sweetened and spiced, generally traced in America to the Dutch olykoek ("oil cake") of New Netherland, and long established in New England kitchens by the time this book appeared. The "Raised" in the title distinguishes them from the quicker chemically leavened doughnuts that spread through late nineteenth-century cookbooks once baking powder became cheap and reliable, while "Yankee" more plausibly marks region. The instruction to keep the batter warm until light is a reminder that fermentation was managed by the stove and the season, not the clock, and that a cook kept her own yeast alive in a jar the way she kept a sourdough today.