Doughnuts Delight

Raised or cake? Glazed or frosted? Jelly or cream?

A kaleidoscope of delicious permutations turns around my mind as I peruse the dynamic rainbow of delights before my eyes, the unmistakable lingering memory of fried dough mingling with aromatic coffee in the still air.

Although doughnuts didn’t begin their heyday in the United States until the 1920s, Washington Irving was already distinguishing the delectable treats back in 1809’s “A History of New York”:

“Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks—a delicious kind of cake, at present, scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families; but which retains its pre-eminent station at the tea tables in Albany.”

The Dutch dubbed their creations oliekoecken (“oil cakes”)—and occasionally oliebollen (“oil balls”), aptly so before dough-dispensing technology eliminated the oft-undercooked centers via a central hole.

One folkloric version of the centerless doughnut’s genesis falls to a sea captain, one Hanson Crockett Gregory of Rockport, ME, who reputedly poked free the soft, gooey centers of his mother’s “dough nuts” in 1847 and speared the rings on his vessel’s wheel, thereafter calling for all said treats to arrive sporting holes. Enter the doughnut cutter.

Although recipes had graced American cookbooks since the mid-1800s, it wasn’t until the 1920s when the doughnut hit the masses with force, largely thanks to Adolph Levitt (“Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole”), co-builder of a better doughnut-frying machine for his Mayflower Doughnut shop in New York—technology he profitably passed along to bakeries across the country, helping revolutionize the industry.

Countries the world over have fostered a multitude of fried-dough interpretations—whether yeast-raised or chemically leavened (another catalyst to widespread success)—from French beignet to German fasnacht, Latin American churros to Israeli sufganiyah and Polish pączki—all varieties with ethnically established spots on our regional-American culinary landscape.

And although ever-indulgent doughnuts are now largely the domain of Dunkin’, Krispy and Tim, scratch-made versions still pop up at coffee shops and bakeries—and even in fine dining, a la Thomas Keller’s Coffee and Doughnuts, David Burke’s Kickin’ Doughnuts or Rick Bayless’ celebrated churros.

Of late, the doughnut appears trailing in the wake of the boutique-cupcake craze. At Glazed Donuts Chicago, flavors like pomegranate thyme and Bing cherry balsamic are raising doughnut flavors to unforeseen heights—and similar shops have popped up from coast to coast.

But I’ll still happily take one glazed, with a large, black coffee, to go—any day of the week.