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Walnut Hill's Doughnuts
Mrs Howe, One teacup sour cream or milk, two teacups of sugar, one teacup of butter, four eggs; spice with nutmeg and cinnamon; one teaspoonful of soda; beat all well together with some of the flour; then mix with the hands till stiff enough to roll; cut in diamond cakes and fry in hot lard.
A plain sour-cream doughnut with no stated flour quantity and no fixed frying temperature, which is where a modern cook has to supply judgment. Everything else on the list is straightforward.
- The teacupA nineteenth-century teacup is smaller than a modern mug, roughly 6 fl oz, though many cookbooks of the period used it loosely for a cup. Treating it as a standard 8 oz cup works, provided all three are measured the same way.
- Flour is unmeasured on purpose"Mix with the hands till stiff enough to roll" is the whole instruction. Expect somewhere in the range of five to six cups, added gradually; stop as soon as the dough holds a shape, because doughnuts made from stiff, over-floured dough fry up tough and dry.
- Soda needs the sour creamOne teaspoon of soda has little to react with unless the dairy is genuinely acidic; the recipe's alternative, "milk," would in period use have meant soured milk. Cultured buttermilk or real cultured sour cream works; sweet cream and modern pasteurized milk give at best the small amount of gas soda releases from heat alone, and can leave a soapy taste.
- No saltNo salt is listed. If you are using unsalted butter, add half a teaspoon to the flour, or the sweetness will read flat.
- Chill before rollingThe recipe has you add flour by hand until the dough is stiff enough to roll, but with a teacup of butter and four eggs an hour in the refrigerator still makes it roll and cut more cleanly and helps it take up less fat in the kettle.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "hot lard." Modern practice for frying doughnuts is about 365-375F: below that they absorb grease, above it the outside colors before the center sets. Reckon on roughly ninety seconds a side, turning once, and let the fat recover between batches.
- Diamond cakesRoll about a third of an inch thick and cut into diamonds with a knife or pastry wheel — no ring, no hole. Diamonds were one of the older shapes, alongside twists and knots, and the thinner cut is what lets the center cook through.
- YieldRoughly three to four dozen diamonds, depending on how thin you roll. They are best the day they are made; sour-cream doughnuts stale quickly.
Doughnuts of this kind — sour cream or buttermilk slackened with soda, spiced with nutmeg, cut in diamonds or twisted into knots rather than rung — were common in American home baking through the nineteenth century, and the diamond cut is older than the ring cutter. The dependence on sour dairy is the tell: a farm kitchen with cream that had turned had the acid a spoonful of soda needed, and soda was the cheap partner that unlocked it. The recipe is credited to a contributor, Mrs Howe, and gives no flour measurement at all — a recipe passed between neighbors assumed the reader already knew what a rolling dough felt like. The title's "Walnut Hill" may be a house, school or district name attached by the contributor rather than an ingredient; there are no walnuts in it.