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Sweet-Milk Doughnuts
1 tablespoon butter or fat 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 cup milk 3 teaspoons baking-powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon nutmeg Flour Beat the eggs till very light, add the sugar and when foamy add the melted butter or fat. Sift the baking-powder, salt and nutmeg with one cup of flour and stir into first mixture, alternating with the milk so as to keep the mixture smooth. Add just enough flour to make a soft dough which can be handled. Roll out three-fourths inch thick on a lightly floured board. A soft dough makes light, tender doughnuts when cooked. Fry in deep fat and drain on unglazed paper. Test the fat for temperature or by using a thermometer. Fat should never smoke, as this produces harmful by-products. Roll the doughnuts in powdered sugar just before serving.
A plain baking-powder doughnut of the 1920s, leavened chemically rather than with yeast. The recipe leaves the flour open-ended, so the judgment about dough consistency is the whole job.
- Flour quantityThe list gives no amount; expect roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups of all-purpose flour in total, including the cup sifted with the leavening. Stop as soon as the dough holds together and can be patted out — it should stay tacky, not smooth and firm like a biscuit dough.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat for doughnuts wants 365-375F. Below that they absorb grease and go heavy; above 385F the outside colors before the center sets. Use a thermometer and let the fat recover between batches.
- Fat and smokingThe warning against smoking fat is sound. Use a neutral oil with a high smoke point rather than the lard or vegetable shortening of the period; both of those work too.
- Unglazed paperThat means brown paper or newsprint, used because it absorbed grease. Paper towels over a rack do the same job, and a rack alone keeps the undersides from steaming.
- Thickness and cuttingThree-quarters of an inch is thicker than most modern doughnut recipes call for and gives a cakey crumb with a pale band around the equator where the doughnut expanded after being turned. Cut with a floured doughnut cutter and fry the holes alongside.
- NutmegA whole teaspoon is assertive by current standards but characteristic of the style. Grate it fresh; pre-ground nutmeg that has sat in a cupboard contributes almost nothing.
- SugaringRoll in powdered sugar while the doughnuts are still just warm so it clings, but not hot, or it dissolves into a glaze. Cinnamon sugar is the usual alternative.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 doughnuts plus holes, depending on cutter size. They are best within a few hours; by the next day the crumb dries and they want reheating.
Sweet-milk doughnuts are the counterpart to the older sour-milk or buttermilk kind, which relied on saleratus reacting with the acid in the milk. Once reliable commercial baking powder became a pantry staple in the later nineteenth century, cooks could use fresh milk and get consistent lift, and recipe titles began specifying which sort of milk was meant. The Delineator was a Butterick fashion magazine whose kitchen department carried this sort of standardized, teaspoon-measured recipe to a national readership in the 1920s.