Doughnut
↔ Varies by recipeA doughnut is a fried sweet dough, usually shaped as a ring or a ball, that is eaten around the world as a snack or breakfast item. Its ring shape and its commercial identity are most closely associated with the United States, although its ancestors are much older and more varied.
History
The origins of the doughnut are debated. Some historians place its precursors among medieval peoples of northern Europe. Among the documented antecedents is a Latin recipe recorded by Cato the Elder in De agri cultura, for deep-fried dough balls made with cheese, honey and poppy seeds, called globi. A thirteenth-century Arabic cookbook attributed to Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī describes a doughnut-like variant of sfenj made from leavened semolina dough, which was shaped into a small ball and, in one version, into a ring with a hole in the middle.
The modern doughnut is generally considered to descend from the Dutch oliebollen, sweet fried dough balls eaten at Christmas, which Dutch settlers brought to New Amsterdam, the future New York, in the early eighteenth century. These early versions closely resembled later ones, but they did not yet have the ring shape. In England, recipes for fried dough “nuts” were printed in the eighteenth century, and in 1809 Washington Irving used the term dough-nuts in his History of New York to describe balls of sweetened dough fried in hog fat.
The ring shape is popularly attributed to Hanson Gregory, an American sailor who said that in 1847 he punched a hole in the centre of the dough with the tin pepper box of his ship, so that the inside would cook properly. This account comes mainly from Gregory himself and from family tradition, and it is presented as his own testimony. What is better recorded is that by about 1870 home-shopping catalogues were offering cutters with two concentric circles, which shows that the ring shape had spread into domestic kitchens.
From there the doughnut moved from the home kitchen into commerce. In the United States it became a staple of bakeries and chains, and from the 1960s frozen baked versions were sold in supermarkets. Franchises such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Winchell’s Donuts and Baskin Robbins carried the product to many other countries. In Spain, in 1962, the businessman and baker Andrés Costafreda founded the company Donut Corporation after a trip to the United States and began selling doughnuts under the Donuts brand. Today that brand is produced by the Panrico Group, and since 2007 the Dulcesol Group has made the product under the Soles Dulcesol name, which has become one of the main commercial options in Spain.
Culture
In the United States the doughnut is part of breakfast and is usually accompanied by coffee or milk, and it is linked to the image of police officers, which films and television have made familiar. In other Western countries it is an everyday sweet, especially popular with young people, who enjoy its combinations of flavours: coloured glazes, sprinkles, desiccated coconut or chopped peanuts, and fillings of jam, custard or cream. The most common types fall into three families: cake doughnuts, made from a batter; raised doughnuts, leavened with yeast; and traditional, filled doughnuts with a denser body.
The ring shape shares the stage with other forms. Small bite-sized balls cut from the centre of the dough, known as “holes”, are sold as a product in their own right, and chains such as Dunkin’ and Tim Hortons market them under brand names. In New Orleans the beignet is a square doughnut dusted with powdered sugar and strongly associated with the city, while in Canada the bar and the Dutchie, elongated or flattened shapes usually glazed, sell very well.
Outside North America the doughnut adapts to local kitchens. In Cambodia, nom kong is a ring of jasmine rice flour dough, fried and coated in palm sugar toffee with sesame seeds. It is an inexpensive childhood treat that inspired the Cambodian-American entrepreneur Ted Ngoy, whose story led to the film The Donut King. In Thailand, pa thong ko is sold from street stalls and eaten in the morning with Thai tea. In Armenia, the ponchik is a flattened dough that puffs up when fried and is filled with custard. In Austria, Krapfen are linked mainly to the Carnival season, and in Poland the jam-filled pączki are the sweet of the same period. In Portugal, the malasada has no hole and is typical of Madeira and the Azores, where it is eaten on Shrove Tuesday. In the Netherlands, oliebollen are eaten on New Year’s Eve.
In Spain the doughnut coexists with another traditional sweet, the rosquilla, a fermented dough that is either baked or fried and that varies by region and by time of year. In some areas it is prepared mainly during Holy Week, and in the Canary Islands it is known as rosquete. It is more compact and less sweet than the American-style doughnut, but both now share the same space in bakeries, supermarkets and cafés.
Legend and fact
Two attributions circulate with little independent evidence: that Hanson Gregory invented the ring shape in 1847 with a ship’s pepper box, and the idea, attributed to the culinary historian Linda Civitello, that the hole was made so the doughnut would cook faster. Gregory’s account rests largely on his own testimony and family tradition. What is better documented is that recipes for ring-shaped fried dough existed before the nineteenth century, and that the modern form became established during that century.