Doughnuts
1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 1/4 cups milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoonful sugar 4 1/2 cups sifted flour 1/2 cup sugar 3 tablespoonfuls butter 1/4 teaspoonful mace 1 egg 1/4 teaspoonful salt YOU can bank on these directions to give you Doughnuts that are light, tender and crispy-crusted. They do not absorb the grease because they rise before being immersed in it.
Dissolve yeast and one tablespoonful sugar in lukewarm liquid, add one and one-half cups of flour and beat well. Cover and set aside to rise in warm place for about one hour or until bubbles burst on top. Add to this the butter and sugar creamed, mace, egg well beaten, the remainder of the flour to make a moderately soft dough, and the salt. Knead lightly. Place in well-greased bowl. Cover and allow to rise again in warm place for about one and one-half hours. When light, turn on floured board, roll to about one-third inch in thickness. Cut with small doughnut cutter, cover and let rise again, in warm place until light--about forty-five minutes. Drop into deep, hot fat with side uppermost which has been next to board. When a film of smoke begins to rise from fat, it will be found a good temperature to fry the doughnuts; or when the fat is hot enough to brown a one-inch square of Bread in 4 seconds the temperature is correct. Fry to a golden brown, drain and roll at once in powdered sugar.
These are raised doughnuts, lifted by yeast across three risings rather than by baking powder. The dough is straightforward; the fat is where a modern cook can go wrong.
- Ignore the smokeThe recipe offers two tests for the fat: a film of smoke beginning to rise, or a one-inch cube of bread browning in four seconds. The second is sound and still works. The first was written for lard and the other fats of the day, which smoke at about frying temperature; a refined modern oil smokes a long way above it, and waiting for smoke means doughnuts scorched outside and raw in the middle. A thermometer at around 370°F (185°C) settles it.
- Which side goes downThe instruction to drop them in with the side uppermost that has been next to the board is not fussiness. The underside has flattened and dried against the board, and giving it the second half of the fry lets it puff out as the doughnut is turned. Doughnuts put in the other way up come out one-sided.
- MaceMace is the lacy red covering that wraps the nutmeg seed, dried and ground separately. It is lighter and less resinous than nutmeg itself. Nutmeg will stand in if there is no mace in the house, used a little more sparingly.
- Lower, do not dropAfter cutting, the rings rise a third time on the board, and by then they are slack enough that lifting one by hand deflates it. Cut them onto floured squares of paper, or slide a floured spatula underneath, and lower them into the fat rather than dropping them in. Hot fat thrown up by a dropped doughnut is the one real hazard in the whole process.
- No yield is givenThe booklet never says how many this makes, and four and a half cups of flour is a large batch by any modern measure. It halves without trouble. Raised doughnuts are also at their best within a few hours of frying, which argues for making fewer.
- Sugar them hotRolling them in powdered sugar at once, as directed, works because the surface is still warm and faintly greasy and will hold it. A doughnut left to cool first sheds its sugar onto the plate.
The headnote makes an argument: that these doughnuts do not absorb the grease because they rise before being immersed in it. That is salesmanship more than physics. What mostly governs how much fat a doughnut soaks up is the temperature of the fat, since a cool bath lets the dough drink before the surface sets. But the claim marks a real rivalry. The cake doughnut, lifted by baking powder and mixed in a few minutes, was the easier proposition in any kitchen, and a company selling yeast had every reason to insist that the slow kind was the better one. The spicing points the other way, to older practice: mace rather than cinnamon was a staple sweet spice in English and early American baking, and its presence here puts the recipe in a line considerably older than the booklet promoting it.