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Doughnuts (Eggs well beaten C sugar T)
2 eggs, well beaten 1½ C sugar 2 T melted lard 1 C buttermilk or sour milk 1 level t soda ½ t salt Nutmeg 1 heaping t baking powder Combine all ingredients. Sift baking powder in enough flour to make rather stiff dough. Cut out and let stand fifteen minutes. Then fry in hot lard. Roll in sugar.
Christina D. Kern.
Note: Mrs. Geo. Smith uses only 1 C sugar and 4 T melted laard.
A plain buttermilk doughnut of the church-supper type, written in the shorthand these community books assume: C is cup, T tablespoon, t teaspoon. The flour is deliberately unmeasured, which is the whole difficulty and the whole point.
- The "12 t salt" is a misprintNo doughnut takes twelve teaspoons of salt. It is almost certainly ½ t, garbled in typesetting. Use half a teaspoon.
- Flour is by feel, not by numberFlour is by feel, not by number — "enough flour to make rather stiff dough" will probably fall somewhere around 3½ to 4 cups for this quantity of liquid, though the original gives no figure at all. Add it gradually and stop as soon as the dough will handle; the recipe asks for a rather stiff dough, but every extra cup of flour past that point makes a heavier doughnut.
- Soda and baking powder bothSoda and baking powder both — the soda is there to react with the buttermilk's acid, the baking powder to guarantee lift regardless. Real cultured buttermilk or milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar both work; plain sweet milk with no acid in it gives the soda nothing to react with.
- Frying temperature"Hot lard" means 365–375°F. Below that the dough drinks fat and turns greasy; above it the outside colors before the center sets. Use a thermometer and let the fat recover between batches — depth of about 2 inches.
- The fifteen-minute restThe fifteen-minute rest — this is not optional padding. Letting the cut rings stand dries the surface slightly and relaxes the gluten, which gives a cleaner shape; some cooks also credit it with less fat absorption. Leave them uncovered on a floured board.
- Nutmeg quantityNutmeg quantity — left unmeasured; about ½ to 1 teaspoon, freshly grated, suits this quantity. Nutmeg is the characteristic spice of old-style cake doughnuts rather than a background note.
- LardTwo tablespoons of melted lard in the dough can be replaced with butter or a neutral oil. For frying, lard gives the traditional flavor and a crisp exterior, but any fat with a smoke point above 400°F will serve.
- The variation, and yieldMrs. Smith's version — 1 cup sugar, 4 tablespoons lard — is less sweet and more tender, and is arguably the better doughnut. Either way expect roughly 18 to 24 doughnuts plus holes. Roll in sugar while still warm so it clings.
Community cookbooks of this kind were commonly compiled from contributions credited to each cook by name and sold to raise funds, though nothing on the page itself establishes how this particular book was produced or for whom. That kind of compilation accounts for the terseness — the recipe assumes a reader who already knows what doughnut dough looks like — and for the note appended at the end, which preserves a second cook's variation rather than settling it. The doughnut itself is the American sour-milk cake type, leavened chemically rather than with yeast, which spread widely once baking soda and commercial baking powder became cheap household staples in the later nineteenth century. Buttermilk was a byproduct of home butter-making and cost little, and nutmeg, cheap and shelf-stable, is a very common spice in the genre.