A Simple Treat?
seawater boiling over the gunwales. Without thinking, Gregory impaled the cake he was holding on one of the ship’s wheel’s spokes, poking out the center, so he could clutch the helm with both hands. In that instant, he had invented the modern American doughnut, hole and all.
Doughnut holes offer all the deliciousness of a full-size doughnut in a delightful bite-size form.
OUGHNUTS are pretty simple concoctions, right? Take a little dough, fry it up in some oil, and then cover it with some sugar. Presto! You’ve got doughnuts. Right? Well, not quite. The truth is that not all doughnuts are made the same way. Today, there are two basic types of doughnuts—cake doughnuts, which are made using a leavening agent, like baking powder or baking soda, and yeast- leavened doughnuts. Cooking styles further differentiate doughnuts from one another as well. There are fried doughnuts, which are cooked to golden brown perfection in oil, and then there are baked doughnuts. But dough types and cooking styles aren’t the only things that separate one doughnut from another these days.
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When most people think of a doughnut, the ever-popular ring doughnut probably comes to mind. But doughnuts come in various shapes and styles. There are filled doughnuts, like Boston creams and jelly doughnuts; rectangular bar doughnuts; and twists, like cinnamon twists and crullers. There are also doughnut holes, which are the cut out centers of ring doughnuts fried or baked into delightful bite-size treats. And when it comes to toppings and fillings, the sky seems to be the limit as to what can be done with a doughnut today. There are always the old standbys, like glazed, iced, sugared, and cream-filled doughnuts, but doughnut shops now offer a dizzying array of flavors and combinations of toppings and fillings. What was once a simple pleasure can now be found in forms that range from the mildly extravagant (like the New York cheesecake flavored doughnut offered by one major doughnut shop chain) to the outrageous (such as the maple icing and bacon covered doughnut made by a doughnut shop in Portland, Oregon). —JS
the American doughnut took place while he was caught in a sudden squall off the coast of Maine. An exhausted and very hungry Gregory gripped the ship’s wheel and was wrestling with the pull of the rudder
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when the wheelhouse door banged open. He glanced around to see the ship’s cook staggering toward him with a plate of fried cakes—solid pastries that looked like lumps of golden brown dough. Hastily, Gregory freed a hand to grab one. Just then, a monstrous wave struck the ship with the sound of a cannon shot and sent
So the story goes, anyway. In fact, there are competing versions of the tale. According to another version, Gregory was in command of a ship when several sailors ate too many heavy, grease-sodden doughnuts without holes and fell overboard and drowned. In response, the distraught captain decreed that there would be holes in the middle of all future doughnuts to make them lighter. In a much more likely version of the story, Captain Gregory’s mother made the doughnuts, and he removed the centers to get rid of the uncooked, oil- soaked dough in the middle. Yet another version of the tale was given by Gregory himself in a 1916 inter- view with the Washington Post. According to Gregory, it was in 1847, when he was sixteen years old, that he discovered the doughnut hole. Having become tired of the raw centers of the doughnuts produced aboard ship, he punched out the middles of the cakes with a tin pepper box before the cook dunked them in hot oil. “No more indigestion—” he remembered, “no more greasy sink- ers—just well-done, fried-through doughnuts.” He then showed his brainstorm to his mother, who spread the recipe to friends and neighbors. Whoever put the first hole in the modern American doughnut, gadgets for creating doughnut holes have existed since the 1850s, and it was around this time that the ring-shaped doughnut came into vogue in the United States. At the turn of the century, however, doughnuts were still far from mainstream fare in the United States. It would take a world war, the Salvation Army—and possibly the Elks—to change that.
Doughnuts Go to War
The United States entered World War I in 1917, and with it went the Salvation Army and the “Hallelujah Lassies,” as female Salvation Army personnel were known. Unfortunately, the Salvation Army found itself short
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PHOTO: RODOLFO BENITEZ/STOCKFOOD
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