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Rich Raised Doughnuts
1 cup butter 2 cups sugar (With Yeast) 4 cups scalded milk 1 yeast cake dissolved in ½ cup lukewarm water Five Roses flour 3 eggs (beaten).
Cream the butter. Add 1 cup sugar and beat again to a cream.
Add the scalded milk and yeast cake dissolved in lukewarm water. Mix with Five Roses flour to make a thick batter.
Cover and let rise over night.
In the morning, add to the sponge the 3 beaten eggs, another cup sugar and ½ 1/2 nutmeg grated. Mix with Five Roses flour to make a smooth dough than can be kneaded. Let rise, turn out on a board and roll half an inch thick.
Cut into shape, and let rise again for about ½ hour. Then fry and roll in powdered sugar, after draining a minute on paper.
A large overnight yeasted doughnut, closer to a sweet enriched bread than to the baking-powder doughnuts elsewhere in the chapter. The flour is left to the cook's judgement, which is the main thing to plan for.
- Cool the milk firstFour cups of scalded milk poured onto dissolved yeast will kill it. Scald the milk, then let it drop to lukewarm (about 100F) before it meets the yeast; creaming it into the butter and sugar first helps bring the temperature down.
- The yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of the period were commonly around 0.6 oz, though sizes varied. The usual modern substitution is one packet (2 1/4 tsp) of active dry or instant yeast, dissolved in the half cup of warm water as written.
- Flour is unmeasuredThe recipe gives no quantity, leaving it to the cook. For the overnight sponge expect somewhere around 4 to 6 cups to reach a thick batter; the morning dough will take several cups more before it kneads smoothly. Stop when the dough is soft and only faintly tacky, not stiff.
- Overnight riseRecipes of this kind assume a cooler kitchen than most modern ones. In a warm kitchen the sponge can over-ferment and turn sour by morning; refrigerating it overnight and letting it come back to room temperature before adding the eggs is one way round that.
- Frying temperatureNo temperature is given because the fat was judged by eye. Fry at 365-375F, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes a side. Below that the dough drinks fat; above it the outside colours before the crumb sets.
- The half hour proof after cuttingThis second rise on the board is what gives the light, breadlike crumb. Cut rings should look visibly puffed and feel airy before they go into the fat. Keep them covered so a skin does not form.
- SugaringRoll in powdered sugar while still warm but after the minute of draining, as directed. Sugar applied to a greasy hot surface dissolves into a glaze; too cold and it will not adhere at all.
- YieldThis is a full household batch, several pounds of dough, giving roughly four to five dozen doughnuts depending on how large you cut them. It halves cleanly if that is more than you want to fry in one sitting.
- NutmegHalf a nutmeg grated is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons, and grating it fresh matters here since it is the only flavouring in the dough.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, and it prints two parallel traditions side by side: the quick chemically-leavened doughnut that suited a hurried morning, and the older raised doughnut like this one, built on an overnight sponge in the same way a housewife would set bread. Yeasted doughnuts are generally traced in North America to Dutch olykoeks, fried balls of sweetened bread dough. The scale here, four cups of milk and close to a pound of sugar, is generous; the nutmeg is the standard doughnut spice of the period, cheap, shelf-stable, and sold whole.