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Raised Doughnuts
1 cup milk 1/3 cup butter and lard mixed ¼ yeast cake 1 cup light brown sugar 1/4 cup lukewarm water 2 eggs 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 grated nutmeg
An ingredient list for a yeast-risen doughnut of the sort that was still the default in New England kitchens when this book was written. Several of the quantities need translating before it will make sense at a modern counter.
- Yeast cakesThe printed page gives a quarter of a yeast cake, as our text now reads. Compressed yeast cakes of the period ran around 0.6 oz, so a quarter cake is roughly 1/2 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. The 1/4 cup lukewarm water softens it and should be near 105F, not hot.
- Nutmeg"1/2 grated nutmeg" means half a whole nutmeg, grated, which comes to something like 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of ground nutmeg. That is a great deal by current habit; freshly grated is much less harsh than the pre-ground tin.
- Butter and lard mixedThe recipe gives no proportion, only that the two are mixed; equal parts is a reasonable reading. All butter works, and vegetable shortening substitutes for the lard without much loss.
- Flour is not statedThe list gives no flour quantity, and a dough of this liquid content will take a substantial amount. Any figure offered here would be invention, so treat the list as incomplete rather than guessing.
- Light brown sugarA full cup of sugar in a yeast dough slows the rise noticeably; expect a longer, slacker first proof than a plain bread dough of the same size.
- Frying temperatureRaised doughnuts want fat at 365 to 375F. Below that they drink oil and go heavy; above it the outside colours before the crumb is set. A thermometer is worth more here than any visual test.
- YieldA batch built on one cup of milk and two eggs gives roughly two dozen doughnuts and holes, depending on how thin the dough is rolled.
Before chemical leavening took over the doughnut, many were "raised" doughnuts: bread dough enriched with butter, sugar and egg, proofed, cut and fried, closer to a modern glazed yeast doughnut than to a cake doughnut, though chemically leavened versions using pearlash and saleratus predate baking powder. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book prints both kinds side by side; a raised batch takes most of a morning, while the powder version can be fried within twenty minutes of mixing. The compressed yeast cake called for here was sold moist and perishable and bought a cake or two at a time, which is why old recipes speak in fractions of a cake rather than in spoonfuls. Nutmeg was the traditional doughnut spice in New England kitchens, and the quantity here reflects that older, heavier hand with it.