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Doughnuts III
2 cups sugar 4 eggs 1 1/3 cups sour milk 4 tablespoons melted butter 2 teaspoons soda 2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg Flour Mix ingredients in order given; shape, fry, and drain.
A large, plainly written sour-milk doughnut of the kind that filled a farm kitchen's bowl. The original assumes the cook knows how much flour a soft dough wants, and how hot the fat should be.
- The flour is left to youNo quantity is given because the amount depends on the eggs and the milk. Expect roughly 5 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour, added until the dough is soft but no longer sticky enough to cling to the hands. Stop as early as you can; extra flour is what makes doughnuts heavy and dry.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, not spoiled pasteurized milk. Cultured buttermilk is the correct substitute, cup for cup, and its acidity is what the soda is there to neutralize.
- Soda and baking powder togetherTwo teaspoons of soda is generous for 1 1/3 cups of buttermilk, and it is doubled up with baking powder. If your buttermilk is mild, reduce the soda to about 1 teaspoon or the doughnuts will taste soapy and brown too fast on the outside.
- SaltTwo teaspoons reads high by modern habit, but this is a batch of several dozen. It is within reason; scale it down only if you are also cutting the recipe.
- Chill before shapingThe dough handles far better after an hour in the refrigerator. Roll it about 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick and cut with a floured doughnut cutter, working with half the dough at a time and keeping the rest cold.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. Deep fat at about 365 to 375F is the modern standard: below that the dough drinks grease; above it the centers can stay raw. Fry in small batches, roughly 1 1/2 minutes a side, and let the fat come back to temperature in between.
- DrainingLift onto a wire rack rather than a flat layer of paper, so steam escapes from the underside and the crust stays crisp. Sugar or cinnamon sugar, if used, must go on while they are still warm.
- YieldAs written this makes roughly three and a half to four dozen doughnuts plus holes. Half the recipe is a sensible household batch.
Sour-milk doughnuts belong to the era when every kitchen had milk turning on its own schedule and soda was a cheap and ready leavening; the pairing of acid dairy and alkali was a backbone of American quick breads through the nineteenth century. The nutmeg is traditional rather than merely decorative, grated fresh from the whole nut, and it appears in doughnut recipes that predate commercial baking powder.