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Doughnuts
Ada King.
One cup of sugar, two eggs, two tablespoons of melted butter, two-thirds cup of milk, two even teaspoons of cream tartar, one even teaspoon of soda, flour enough to roll, salt and nutmeg.
A terse mid-century doughnut formula that assumes you already know what to do with the dough. The proportions are sound; the method has to be supplied.
- The missing instructionNothing here tells you to fry. Roll the dough about 1/3 inch thick, cut, and fry in 3-4 inches of fat at 365-375F, turning once, roughly 90 seconds a side. Below 350F the doughnuts soak up grease; above 385F they brown before the centres set.
- "Flour enough to roll"Expect 3 to 3 1/2 cups. Stop as soon as the dough is soft but no longer sticky — the more flour you work in, the tougher and drier the doughnut. Chilling the dough 30 minutes makes it far easier to handle than adding more flour does.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTwo teaspoons cream of tartar to one of soda is the classic homemade baking powder ratio; commercial baking powder existed by this period but home-mixed leavening was still common. Modern double-acting baking powder can be substituted, though the equivalent is closer to 3 to 4 teaspoons, and the original pair reacts as soon as it is wet, so mix and fry without delay.
- "Even" teaspoonsEven means level, not heaped. Household spoons of the period were not standardised and could differ from the modern 5 ml measure, so err toward a scant level spoon of soda; excess soda gives a soapy taste and a discoloured crumb.
- Butter and milkTwo tablespoons of butter is a lean dough by modern standards, which use considerably more. Whole milk is what the recipe assumes.
- NutmegUnquantified; something on the order of half a teaspoon, freshly grated, suits the quantity. Nutmeg is the spice most often called for in American doughnut recipes of this era.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 doughnuts with a 2 1/2 inch cutter, plus the holes. They are best within a few hours; let them cool at least somewhat before sugaring, as sugar will dissolve on a hot, greasy surface.
Doughnuts are generally traced to American kitchens through Dutch settlement in the Hudson Valley — the oliekoek, a fried sweetened dough ball — though the route is a likely origin rather than an established one, and fried sweet dough was not exclusively Dutch. By the time The Home Cook Book was compiled they were standard household frying, cheap, quick, and made from pantry staples. The signature detail here is chemical rather than culinary: cream of tartar with soda rather than yeast, which turns a dough that once needed hours of rising into one mixed and fried in the same half hour. That shift, spreading through the 1850s to 1870s, is what made the cake doughnut a weekday item. The attribution to Ada King is typical of the book's method: it was assembled from contributed recipes, each signed, so a community cookbook doubles as a roster of the households that produced it.