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Raised Doughnuts
Peel and boil four good sized potatoes; mash fine, and pour boiling water over them until of the consistency of gruel; let cool, add a yeast cake, and a little flour; let rise till light, then add one pint sweet milk, one and a half cups sugar, one-fourth cup (large measure) lard, a salt-spoon salt, a little nutmeg and cinnamon; stir in flour until stiff, let rise again, then add a half tea-spoon soda dissolved in a little milk, pour out on molding board, mix stiff enough to cut out, and roll to half an inch thickness; cut in long strips two mches wide and divide diagonally into pieces three inches long, set where it is warm, let rise on the board until light, and then fry. These do not cook through as easily as others, and it is safer to drop in one, and, by breaking it open, learn the time required for them to fry. A very nice variation of this recipe may be made as follows: Roll part of the dough about half an inch thick, cut into small biscuit, let rise, and when light, roll down a little, lay a few raisins rolled in cinnamon in the center, wet the edges by dipping the finger in cold water and passing it over them; draw them together and press firmly, and drop them in the hot fat. A tea-spoon of applebutter or any kind of jam may be used instead of the raisins. When made with the raisins, they are the real German "Olly Koeks." -Mrs. J. L. H., Milwaukee, Wis.
A potato-yeast doughnut dough, sweetened and enriched, proofed three times. The potato starch keeps the crumb moist and slows staling, but it also makes a slack dough that fries slower than a cake doughnut.
- The hinge: fry lower and longerBecause these are thick, risen and starchy, the outside colors well before the middle sets. Hold the fat at 350-360F, not hotter, and take the recipe's own advice: fry one, break it open, and time the rest by it. Expect roughly 1 1/2 to 2 minutes a side.
- A yeast cakeThe "yeast cake" of this period could be a homemade dried hop-and-meal cake or a commercial compressed one; the recipe gives no weight. One packet of active dry or instant yeast (2 1/4 tsp) is a reasonable working substitute here, given the long, sugar-rich rises.
- Salt-spoonA salt-spoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. That is very little salt for this quantity of dough; 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons suits modern palates.
- The potato spongeFour good-sized potatoes means roughly 1 1/2 lb. Mash them smooth and thin with boiling water to a pourable gruel, then cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, or the heat will kill it.
- Lard, large measure"One-fourth cup (large measure)" means a generous quarter cup, call it 4 to 5 tablespoons. Lard gives the tenderest result; shortening or butter both work, butter adding flavor and a slightly firmer crumb.
- The sodaHalf a teaspoon of soda at the end neutralizes the acidity built up by the long potato ferment and adds a little lift. It is not the leavener; do not increase it or the doughnuts will taste soapy.
- Proofing on the boardThe recipe leaves the cut pieces to rise on the board and says nothing about covering them; cover them loosely, or they can skin over and crack in the fat. They are ready when a fingertip dent fills back slowly.
- Frying fatThe recipe says only "hot fat"; lard would have been the usual choice. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point does the same job; keep at least three inches of depth so the doughnuts float and turn freely.
- YieldThis makes a large batch, in the region of three to four dozen 2-by-3-inch doughnuts. Halve it if you are not feeding a crowd, and eat them the day they are made.
"Olly Koeks" is oliekoek, Dutch for oil-cake: a ball of raised dough, usually with raisins or currants worked in or tucked inside, fried in deep fat and eaten around the turn of the year. Dutch settlers carried it to New Netherland, and it is generally traced as one ancestor of the American doughnut, though the round-with-a-hole form belongs to a later, mostly nineteenth-century development. Mrs. J. L. H. calls the raisin version "the real German" one, which is the sort of slippage common in Midwestern community cookbooks of the 1870s and 80s, where Dutch, German and Pennsylvania-German traditions sat side by side and got labeled interchangeably. Milwaukee in that decade was heavily German, and a fried, spiced, yeast-raised sweet with fruit in the middle would have been familiar there as Berliner or Fastnacht as much as anything Dutch. The potato base is the practical part: cheap, always on hand, and a reliable way to keep a rich fried dough soft for more than a day.