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Doughnuts
1 cake compressed yeast 1¼ cups milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoon sugar 4½ cups sifted flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup sugar 3 level tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon mace 2 eggs Dissolve the yeast and one tablespoon of sugar in lukewarm liquid; add half of the flour and beat well. Cover and set aside to rise in a warm place for about one hour, or until bubbles burst. on top. Add to this the butter and sugar creamed; mace, eggs well beaten, the remainder of the flour to make a soft dough, and last the salt. Knead lightly; place in well-greased bowl; cover and allow to rise again in warm place for about one and a half hours. When light, turn on floured board; roll to about one fourth inch in thickness. Cut with small doughnut cutter; cover and let rise again, on floured board or paper, 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 cook doughnuts. Doughnuts made by this method do not absorb the fat, for the reason that they rise before and not after they are put into the grease.
A yeast-raised doughnut, closer to a modern bakery raised ring than to the baking-powder cake doughnuts that dominate older American books. The instructions are sound; the frying temperature is the one place the original guidance should be ignored.
- Frying temperatureDo not wait for "a film of smoke." Smoking fat is at or past its breakdown point and will taste scorched. Use a thermometer and hold the fat at 365-375F, adjusting between batches.
- Compressed yeastOne cake of compressed (fresh) yeast of the period was about 0.6 oz. Substitute one packet, 2 1/4 teaspoons, of active dry or instant yeast. With instant yeast the rises will run somewhat faster than the times given.
- Scalded milkScalding was standard practice with raw milk; the usual explanation is that it denatures milk proteins that would otherwise slacken the dough. Pasteurised milk needs only to be warmed to about 100F, and the recipe's "cooled" step becomes moot.
- MaceGround mace is the outer aril of nutmeg, warmer and lighter than nutmeg itself and the traditional doughnut spice. Ground nutmeg at the same quantity is the nearest substitute if mace is not in the cupboard.
- The frying fatThe original assumed a deep kettle of lard. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works; you need enough depth for the rings to float freely, roughly 3 inches, and a heavy pan that holds temperature when cold dough goes in.
- The turned-side instructionThe recipe wants the face that has been resting on the board turned uppermost, so the upper face of the proofed ring goes into the fat first.
- Third riseThe forty-five minute proof on the board is what keeps the doughnuts from soaking up grease, as the note explains. Cut them onto squares of floured paper so each can be lowered into the fat without deflating.
- Yield and finishingFour and a half cups of flour cut at 1/4 inch gives roughly 20 to 24 doughnuts plus holes. Drain on a rack rather than flat paper, and sugar them while still warm if you want the coating to stick.
Raised doughnuts of this kind belong to the older Dutch-descended tradition of fried yeast dough that reached America through New Netherland, where the ancestor was a spherical oliekoek rather than a ring. By the time Mrs. Fryer was writing, the ring shape was standard and the American doughnut had split into two families: quick cake doughnuts leavened with baking powder, and slower yeast-raised ones like this. The claim at the end of the recipe, that dough risen before frying absorbs less fat, is genuinely good technique rather than folklore: a well-proofed, gas-filled dough sets its crust quickly and gives the fat less time to penetrate.