Doughnuts
1 Teaspoonful Cinnamon ¼ Teaspoonful Clove 11/2 Teaspoonfuls Salt 2 Teaspoonfuls Baking Powder From 4 to 5 Cupfuls Flour Beat the eggs, then cream in the sugar and add the milk. Sift together the dry ingredients, using four cupfuls of flour. Add the melted Snowdrift to the first mixture, beat in the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Put a fourth of the mixture at a time onto a slightly floured board, roll over the dough, to coat it with flour, then roll it out to one-fourth inch in thickness and shape with a doughnut-cutter. Fry in deep Snowdrift, hot enough to brown a bit of bread in a minute. Drain on crumpled paper, dust with sugar and a little cinnamon, if desired, and serve hot or cold. The doughnut mixture should be kept as soft as it can be handled. The exact amount of flour to be used depends upon the kind.
All Measurements are Level
A plain rolled doughnut of the early twentieth century, leavened with baking powder rather than yeast and fried in vegetable shortening. The method is sound; a few of the conventions need translating.
- SnowdriftSnowdrift was a brand of cottonseed-oil shortening, sold as a substitute for lard. Any solid vegetable shortening works in the dough, and a neutral high-smoke-point oil is fine for the frying.
- Frying temperature"Hot enough to brown a bit of bread in a minute" corresponds to roughly 365-375F. Below that the doughnuts absorb fat and turn heavy; above it the outside colours before the centre sets.
- Flour rangeThe 4 to 5 cupfuls is deliberate, not vague. Start with four, and add only enough more to make the dough just handleable, as the closing note insists. Soft dough is the whole point of this formula.
- Working in quartersThe recipe has you roll out one fourth of the mixture at a time. The instruction to roll the dough over on the floured board coats it lightly rather than working extra flour through it.
- ThicknessOne-fourth inch is thinner than most modern rolled doughnuts, which gives a crisper ring and a shorter fry. Turn once when the underside is deep gold.
- Draining"Crumpled paper" is the period equivalent of a paper-towel-lined rack; crumpling lifts the doughnuts off the flat surface so steam escapes. A wire rack over a tray does the job better.
- Level measurementsThe book's standing note that all measurements are level matters most for the baking powder and the spices. Heaped spoons of leavening will give a coarse, soapy crumb.
- YieldA batch built on four to five cups of flour gives roughly two to two and a half dozen doughnuts plus holes, depending on cutter size. They are best within a few hours of frying.
This comes from a manufacturer's cookbook, one of hundreds issued by American food companies between the 1890s and the 1930s to teach cooks to use a new product. Snowdrift, a cottonseed-oil shortening marketed by the Southern Cotton Oil Company, was competing directly with lard and with rival brands, and the recipes in such books name the brand in every line where fat appears -- here twice, once in the dough and once in the kettle. Rolled, spiced, baking-powder doughnuts of this kind were the standard American home version by then, having largely displaced the older yeast-raised olykoek the Dutch brought to New York; the chemical leaven made them a same-morning job rather than an overnight one. The insistence on level measurements and the frank admission that flour absorbency varies mark the book as post-Fannie-Farmer, from the era when standardised measuring was still being taught rather than assumed.