Doughnuts
One quart flour, three teaspoons baking powder, one coffeecup sugar, two tablespoons melted lard, one coffee cup milk, two eggs, one-half teaspoon salt, flavor with vanilla or nutmeg; a little more milk may be needed, as they must be mixed soft; cut out in the form of a jumble.
A plain baking-powder doughnut of the kind that filled supper tables before yeast-raised doughnuts became the shop standard. The recipe assumes you already know what to do with the dough, so the frying is left entirely to you.
- The missing instructionNothing here tells you to fry the rings, because no reader of the period needed telling. Fry in deep fat at 365-375F, two to three minutes, turning once. Below 350F they drink grease; above 385F the outside colors before the center sets.
- A quart of flourMeasured by volume, roughly 4 cups, about a pound. Period flour was scooped rather than spooned, so start with 4 cups and hold back the last half cup until you see how soft the dough is.
- CoffeecupPeriod cup names were not standardised, but a coffeecup is usually reckoned at somewhere around one cup, and generally smaller than a breakfast cup. Reading both the sugar and the milk as about 1 cup each is a reasonable working choice.
- Mixed softThis is the hinge. The dough should be soft enough to be barely workable, just short of sticking to the board. A stiff dough gives hard, bready doughnuts; the extra milk mentioned in the text is not optional if the dough is firm.
- Cut out in the form of a jumbleJumbles were small sweet cakes usually formed as rings, though knots and twists are also recorded, so the direction most likely means a plain doughnut ring. Roll about a third of an inch thick and cut with a doughnut cutter, or a large and small biscuit cutter together; the hole helps the centre cook through.
- Melted lardTwo tablespoons of lard in the dough can be replaced with the same amount of melted shortening or butter. Lard is still the better frying fat here if you have it; otherwise use a neutral oil with a high smoke point.
- YieldA batch this size will give roughly two to three dozen doughnuts of ordinary size, plus the holes. They are at their best within a few hours; sugar them while still warm if you want the sugar to cling.
The chemically leavened doughnut of this recipe belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century, when baking powder made it possible to skip the yeast sponge and have fried cakes on the table within the hour; older receipt books give a raised doughnut, set with yeast and left to rise. The direction to cut them "in the form of a jumble" borrows from an older item, the jumble or jumbal, a small sweet cake commonly formed as a ring; its name has been linked to various European ring- and knot-shaped cakes, but the derivation is not settled.