The origins of the doughnut
We do love a doughnut here and we take great pride in the variety of fantastic flavour combination we come up with.
Our fave flavour combos
Some of our favourites include raspberry ripple with flapjack crumble, Belgian white chocolate with a tiffin topping, orange gingerbread and peppermint chocolate – the possibilities are endless.
But where did the humble doughnut originate from? We did some digging to find out…
Deep fried delights
Doughnuts are usually deep fried from a flour dough, but other batters can also be used. They may also include water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil, shortening, and flavourings.
Ring & filled doughnuts
The two most common types are the ring doughnut, which has a hole in the middle and the filled doughnut, which is injected with fruit, cream, custard, or any other sweet filling you can think of.
History of the doughnut
You might think doughnuts originate from the USA due to their popularity there, however, the cookbook Küchenmeisterei (Mastery of the Kitchen), published in Nuremberg in 1485, includes a recipe for ‘Gefüllte Krapfen’ – sugar free, stuffed, fried dough cakes.
The doughnut appeared in the States in the early 18th century when Dutch settlers brought olykoek (oily cake) to New York.
A recipe for fried dough ‘nuts’ was published in ‘How to make Hertfordshire Cakes, Nuts and Pincushions’ in 1750 in The Country Housewife’s Family Companion by William Ellis.
A recipe labelled ‘dow nuts’ appeared again in Hertfordshire, England around 1800 in a book of recipes and domestic tips.
The first cookbook using the ‘dough nuts’ spelling was the 1803 edition of ‘The Frugal Housewife: Or, Complete Woman Cook’, which included dough nuts in an appendix of American recipes.
Doughnut or donut?
One of the earliest mentions of ‘dough-nut’ was in Washington Irving’s 1809 book A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.
The first known printed use of donut was in ‘Peck’s Bad Boy and his Pa’ by George W. Peck, published in 1900, in which a character is quoted as saying, “Pa said he guessed he hadn’t got much appetite, and he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut.”
According to author, John T. Edge, the alternative spelling ‘donut’ was invented in the 1920s when the New York–based Display Doughnut Machine Corporation abbreviated the word to make it more pronounceable.
Our Doughnuts of the Day
If you enjoy a doughnut, or two, then be sure to pop in and see us as we have a different flavour of doughnut nearly every day available from our counter. You can see our opening hours here.