PHOTO: ©HILL STREET STUDIOS/BLEND IMAGES/CORBIS
It is difficult to say with certainty how the American doughnut originated, but some sources agree that it is a legacy of Dutch settlers who came to America during the seventeenth century.
Doughnut Holes
u The Dutch who settled in America during the seventeenth century ate doughnuts primarily on special occasions. Today, doughnuts can make almost any occasion special.
l Doughnut sales are big business in the United States, where trays of doughnuts under glass are a familiar sight.
seventeenth century by English Pilgrims, who settled in the northeast- ern part of what would become the United States. According to this theory, the Pilgrims acquired the recipe for doughnuts while living in the Netherlands. Others say that it was the Pennsylvania Dutch (who were actually German), who immi- grated to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who were responsible for introducing the doughnut to America.
The Pennsylvania Dutch called their doughnuts fastnachts and like the true Dutch ate them primarily on special occasions, such as Christmas, Easter, and Shrove Tuesday.
T H E E L K S M A G A Z I N E
Regardless of the modern American doughnut’s true origins, doughnut production in America was a very localized affair in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it is unclear when the circular doughnut with a hole in the middle first appeared. The first known published recipe for doughnuts appeared in The Frugal Housewife, an English cookbook, in 1803. It was the second time the book had been published in the United States, and the recipe was included in an appendix dedicated to American food. (Some people believe the appen- dix was added by the cookbook’s American publisher.) The recipe was for a yeast-leavened doughnut boiled in lard, but did not prescribe any specific form for the doughnuts and called on the baker to “make them in what form you please.”
Although some evidence exists to suggest that a doughnut with a hole in it was known in Europe (a 1627 painting by Spanish artist Juan van der Hamen y León depicts a plate of pastries that includes objects that look remarkably like modern doughnuts), the American variety may have been without a hole until the mid-nine- teenth century. It was around this time, according to legend, that an American sea captain named Hanson Gregory began the American practice of putting holes in doughnuts. According to one version of the legend, Gregory’s initial alteration of
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