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Aised Doughnuts
Scald one pint of milk and let it cool; add one egg, piece of butter the size of an egg; one scant teaspoon of soda, one large cup of sugar, and one-half cake of yeast or one-half cup of liquid yeast. Make up at night and keep very warm. Take out of pan in the morning and do not knead, but make up as light as possible; cut and fry in kettle of hot lard. DOUGHNUTS (Sweet Milk) -Two eggs; one cup of sugar; one cup of milk; flour to thicken; one tablespoon of butter; one large teaspoon of baking powder; one teaspoon of salt; one teaspoon of nutmeg. Rub the butter and sugar together, and add the beaten eggs, salt and milk. Stir the powder in a little of the flour, and add this to the mixture, together with the dough and just enough of the flour to admit of rolling out. The softer the dough is made the lighter and more tender will be the doughnuts when cooked, Fry in very hot fat as above; and when the cakes are cold, roll them in sugar.
DOUGHNUTS (Sour Milk)-One egg; one cup of sugar; one cup of sour milk; one tablespoon sour cream; one-half teaspoon each of salt, soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir in flour sufficient to handle, but keep it as soft as possible. Cut, and fry in deep fat. CRULLERS-Cream one cup of sugar with one-fourth cup of butter, add the yolks of two eggs, slightly beaten, and the whites beaten to a stiff froth. Mix thoroughly four cups flour, one-fourth teaspoon grated nutmeg and three and one-half teaspoons of baking powder. Add these dry ingredients, alternately with milk, to the first mixture. Toss on molding board, well floured, roll thin and cut into long narrow strips. Twist, and fry in deep fat.
GINGERBREAD-Ingredients: One cup of sour milk; one cup of molasses; one-half cup of butter, two eggs; one teaspoon of soda; one tablespoon of ginger; flour to make as thick as pound cake. Warm the butter, molasses and ginger, then add the eggs milk, flour and soda, and bake as quickly as possible.
Five related recipes run together here: an overnight yeast-raised doughnut, two chemically leavened ones, crullers and a sour-milk gingerbread. The raised dough is the one with real technique in it, and the instruction that matters is the one about not kneading.
- Do not knead the risen doughAfter the overnight rise the dough is meant to be turned out, patted gently, cut and fried. Kneading develops the gluten and gives you bready, tough doughnuts instead of the light open crumb the recipe is after.
- Half a cake of yeastCompressed yeast cakes of this period varied in size, roughly half an ounce to an ounce, so any conversion is approximate: reckon on about 1 to 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast. "Liquid yeast" was a homemade potato or hop ferment; substitute the dry yeast and slightly reduce the milk if the dough seems slack.
- Why soda goes into a yeast doughAn overnight ferment kept "very warm" turns noticeably sour. The scant teaspoon of soda neutralizes that acid and lifts the flavor; the yeast, not the soda, is doing the raising. Keep it scant or the doughnuts taste soapy.
- Scalding the milkScalding was standard practice with raw milk, on the grounds that something in unscalded milk weakened the dough. With pasteurized milk you can skip it, but warm the milk to about 110F before adding the yeast.
- Flour amounts are not givenFlour amounts are mostly not given -- only the crullers state a quantity, four cups. Elsewhere expect roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups of flour per cup of milk (the raised dough uses a pint, so about twice that), and rather less in proportion for the sweet- and sour-milk versions, which should stay soft enough to be barely handled. The note that softer dough gives more tender doughnuts is sound.
- Fat temperature"Hot lard" means 365 to 375F, checked with a thermometer. Below that the doughnuts drink fat; much above it the outsides color before the centers set. Fry in batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Sour milkSour milk here is naturally clabbered raw milk. Use cultured buttermilk, or a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes; the acid is what activates the soda.
- "Piece of butter the size of an egg"About 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons.
- The gingerbread ovenThe recipe says only to bake it as quickly as possible, and molasses scorches easily. Bake it at 350F in a greased 9-inch square pan for 25 to 35 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. "As thick as pound cake" means a thick batter that drops from the spoon, not a rollable dough.
Butterick's arrangement here reflects a real division in American frying: the yeast-raised doughnut, which came down from the Dutch oliekoek and needed an overnight rise in a warm kitchen, and the quick cake doughnut, made possible in the nineteenth century first by saleratus and sour milk and then by commercial baking powder. By the time this book appeared, both lived side by side in the same household, and a cook chose between them by how much time she had. The crullers are the same family: the name is generally traced to Dutch krulle, a curl or twist, and the twisting is the whole point, since it gives more crisp surface for the fat to work on. All of it was fried in lard, the standard frying fat of the period, and the sour milk called for was simply the milk that had turned by the second day, a resource rather than a waste product in a house without refrigeration.