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Sweet-Milk Doughnuts
1 tablespoon butter or fat
3 teaspoons baking-powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup milk
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 threefourths 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 byproducts.
Roll the doughnuts in powdered sugar just before serving.
A straightforward baking-powder doughnut with no listed flour quantity and no fat temperature — both of which decide whether it succeeds.
- The flour is up to youExpect roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups total, including the cup sifted with the leavening. Stop as soon as the dough holds together and can be patted out; excess flour is the main cause of heavy, bready doughnuts, which is exactly what the note about soft dough is warning against.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe assumes you know the number: 365-375F. Below that the dough drinks fat and turns greasy; above it the outside colours before the centre sets. A cube of bread browning in about 60 seconds is the old test, but a thermometer is better, and the fat needs a minute to recover between batches.
- What to fry inPeriod cooks used lard or beef drippings, both of which take the heat well. Any refined neutral oil with a high smoke point works. The warning against smoking fat is sound — degraded fat tastes acrid and carries the flavour into every doughnut after it.
- Baking-powderThree teaspoons is modest for this much flour by modern standards, but adequate for a fried cake, which should not rise too much. The dough should go into the fat reasonably promptly rather than sitting an hour on the board.
- Unglazed paperBrown paper or newsprint in the period. Use a rack set over a sheet pan, or paper towels; a rack keeps the underside from steaming soft.
- Chill before rollingNot in the original, but a soft dough handles far better after 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll it 3/4 inch thick as directed — thinner doughnuts cook through before they can puff.
- NutmegA whole teaspoon is assertive by modern standards and correct for the style; grate it fresh if you can, as pre-ground loses most of its aroma within months.
- Sugaring and yieldPowdered sugar sticks best when the doughnuts are just warm, not hot and not cold. Expect about 18-20 doughnuts plus holes from a batch this size, best eaten the day they are made.
The name distinguishes this from the older sour-milk or buttermilk doughnut, which relied on saleratus or baking soda reacting with the acid in the milk. Commercial baking powder, widely available by the later nineteenth century, freed cooks from needing sour milk on hand, and "sweet-milk" recipes proliferated in books of this period as the modern, reliable version. The heavy hand with nutmeg is characteristic of American fried cakes and is generally traced to Dutch antecedents in the northeast; Butterick, a pattern company publishing for a broad domestic readership, was gathering the settled household standards of its day rather than novelties.