Doughnuts, a symbol for a country

Everyone knows what a doughnut is but, if there are no nuts in them, why do we call them that way? Doughnuts, as so many food names, have an interesting and complicated history. Even the history about how its hole was invented is full of conflicting evidences.

The earliest known recorded usage of the term dates from an 1808 short story that described the spread of “fire-cakes and dough-nuts”, though the most commonly cited quote as the first written recording of the term is from History of New York written in 1809 by Washington Irving. In it, he described the Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (later New York) and wrote that "The table...was sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks." (a Dutch word literally meaning “oil cake”). Therefore, the doughnuts come from Holland and not from America as some may think.

Because the centre of the cake did not cook as fast as the outside, nuts were placed inside of the ball of dough to prevent the uncooked centre, since they did not require cooking. That´s the reason why it is called “doughnut”.

These Dutch doughnuts were what we called now doughnut holes because, as Irving said, they were just balls of dough; there was no hole. It was in the middle of the 19^th century when they acquired this characteristic (though not all American doughnuts have the hole, they may be filled). The inventor of the ring-shaped doughnut was Hanson Crockett Gregory, an American ship captain of Rockport, Maine, who was only sixteen years old. He solved the problem of the uncooked centre by punching a hole in the centre of the dough ball, that way the hole increased the surface area, the exposure to the hot oil, and therefore eliminated the uncooked center. There are some versions of this invention that tell that Gregory impaled a doughnut on the ship´s steering wheel so that he could use both hands to steer, or that it was delivered to him in a dream by angels.  

Something interesting about this name is that there are two different spellings depending on where you are, doughnut is the most traditional spelling and it is more used in the UK, whereas the shortened form, donut, is normally used in the US, though both of them are correct.

Finally, doughnuts are a very famous food throughout the world; there are large doughnut chains like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Dunkin Donuts, but they are not the only ones, little by little there are more specialist doughnut shops that are creating different flavours and toppings. It could be said that doughnuts are not just for dunking anymore, but for enjoying each one of their flavours.  

Besides, doughnuts appear in the popular culture of some countries like Australia, where the largest donut was made up of 90.000 individual doughnuts as part of the celebration for the release of The Simpsons Movie in 2007 by Donut King and entered in the Guinness Book of Records; Canada, the country that consumes the most doughnuts and that has the most doughnut stores per capita; and particularly the United States, where it is celebrated the National Doughnut Day and there is a race called Tour de Donut in Staunton, Illinois. Apart from their appearance in culture, doughnuts have also appeared in some films, video games, and songs.

As you may have noticed, doughnuts are not just what police officers have in their break times, but also something else.

Hope you enjoyed it!