The doughnut hole was not just a culinary choice but a functional engineering solution.
In short: While we treat doughnuts as a sweet indulgence, their history is a global tapestry of fried dough. From ancient Roman globi to Dutch olykoeks, the evolution of the ring shape—and the hole itself—remains a subject of debate, balancing culinary tradition with the practical need for even cooking.
The origins of the doughnut are deeply rooted in global culinary history. Cato the Elder recorded a recipe for globi, a deep-fried dough ball made with cheese and honey, while a 13th-century Arabic cookbook described a leavened semolina dough shaped into a ring to test its proofing. By the 15th century, the German Küchenmeisterei featured stuffed, fried dough cakes, and Dutch settlers later brought their own version, the olykoek, to New York in the early 18th century. These early iterations were often dense, leading to the common problem of raw centers.
The invention of the iconic ring shape is frequently attributed to Hanson Gregory, who claimed that in 1847, at age 16, he punched a hole in the center of a doughnut using a tin pepper box to solve the issue of greasy, undercooked centers. However, this is contested. Culinary historian Linda Civitello argues the hole was a functional innovation to ensure faster, more uniform cooking. Others, like Michael Krondl, suggest the shape may have been inspired by jumbles, a traditional ring-shaped cookie. By 1870, specialized doughnut cutters were appearing in commercial catalogues, cementing the ring as a standard.
The terminology itself reflects a shifting cultural landscape. While 'doughnut' is the traditional spelling, the shortened 'donut' gained traction in the 1920s, reportedly pushed by the Display Doughnut Machine Corporation to make the product more accessible to international markets. The spelling remained rare until the 1950s but has since become pervasive in American English. Today, the doughnut exists in countless forms, from the Cambodian nom kong, made with jasmine rice flour, to the Indian vada, a savory lentil-based ring, demonstrating how a simple concept of fried dough has been adapted across diverse cultures and centuries.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Doughnut
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