History of doughnuts

Doughnuts first surface in the US around the beginning of the nineteenth century, when they were also called oly-cooks (oliecoek or oilcake in Dutch meaning round cake, deep fried in rape oil). In those days they were still simply small dumplings.

A traditional story about the origin of doughnuts says they were introduced into North America by Dutch settlers. Another story credits the invention of the doughnuts hole to a Danish sea captain named Hanson Gregory. He was credited for his innovation of the hole in the center of doughnuts. 

The first printed reference to be found about doughnuts was in 1809 when Washington Irving reference to ‘doughnuts’ in his History of New York. He wrote: 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 doughnuts.

Doughnuts are also mentioned in the Little House on the Prairie series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

By the early twentieth century, the doughnut was firmly established as an American favorite. They even found their way onto the battlefields of France during the First World War, when members of the Salvation Army provided coffee and doughnuts to American Soldiers as a comfortable reminder of home.
History of doughnuts