A look back at what made America’s favorite treat possible Article by Joe Kissell D oughnuts as we know them today originated in the mid-1800s. Their predecessor was the olykoek, a treat Dutch immigrants to the U.S. made by frying the leftover bits of bread dough in hot oil. Exactly how the name “doughnut” came to be used is the subject of some disagreement. According to some sources, the Dutch twisted their dough into knots, hence “dough knots.” Others point out that the olykoeken tended not to cook through in the very middle, so some makers would put nuts in the center (“dough-nuts”) to make them more palatable. The uncooked centers seem to have been, directly or indirectly, the reason behind the hole. According to several widely diverging accounts, the doughnut hole was apparently the invention of a New England sea captain named Hanson Crockett Gregory (or Hansen Gregory or Mason Crockett Gregory, depending on who you ask) around 1847. Gregory’s mother Elizabeth made olykoeken and sent them with her son on his journeys to sea. The least likely but most colorful version of the story, and therefore the one I like best, is that Gregory needed a place to put his olykoek while he steered the ship, so he impaled it on one of the spokes of the steering wheel. Other sources say that Gregory came up with the idea in a dream or claimed to have received it from angels; some say he simply didn’t like the uncooked centers (or the nuts his mother filled them with) and poked them out; still others say he may have encountered a cake with a hole in the middle during his journeys and decided to adapt the idea to the olykoeken. Whatever Gregory’s real reason for adding the hole, it had the beneficial effect of making the doughnuts cook more evenly, and the idea quickly caught on. Success Rolls On Nearly thirty years later, in 1872, John Blondell received the first patent for a doughnut cutter. Doughnut technology
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