Greetings Amb4599:
"The doughnut has its origins in the Dutch olykoek and the French
beignet, both of which are little nut-shaped hunks of deep-fried yeast
dough. It didn't acquire its un-nutlike but definitive doughnut shape
(that is, the "torus") until the early 19th century in America, when
it was decided that having a hole in the middle of the dough would
increase the surface frying area and improve the texture."
From http://www.cuisinenet.com/digest/breakfast/usa.shtml
If you will view the first image at
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=beignet&btnG=Google+Search
(the link doesn't work but the image is cached) you'll see that a
beignet that is round - hence, the donut round was fashioned after
that shape. The hole apparently came later.
Donuts..."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...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. In any case, the uncooked centers seem to
have been, directly or indirectly, the reason behind the hole...Nearly
three decades later, in 1872, John Blondell received the first patent
for a doughnut cutter."
From http://itotd.com/index.alt?ArticleID=57
"In every country that makes bread, there arises the question of what
to do with the leftover scraps of dough. In England, they dropped the
bits into soup or water, and made dumplings. But in Holland and in
Germany, cooks dropped the extra into boiling oil, and made fry-cakes,
or olie-koecken..."
From http://id.essortment.com/doughnuthistory_rgjt.htm
[Unless the dough was patted out in some way, simply dropping wads of
it into hot oil would result in a round shape.]
From the same site above:
"Although crullers, maple bars, and twists all have the same basic
flavor of a doughnut, it is the latter's distinct shape, with the hole
in the middle that really identifies it. How did the shape change from
the original diamond? Germanic countries already had cookies and cakes
with a hole in the middle, usually referred to as a 'jumble'. (The
word developed from a two-finger ring called a gimbel.) So the shape
itself was something already familiar to cooks of that area, and many
think that the jumble was a strong influence on the
hole-in-the-middle-doughnut."
"The history of the doughnut in America had begun by the first decade
of the 19th century, when Washington Irving wrote in a comical
description of Dutch settlers in New Amersterdam (later New York) that
"The table ...was sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened
dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks." The
oly koeks were Dutch in name and possibly German in origin. They were,
as Irving said, just balls of dough; there was no hole."
So, the roundness was already in place from the Germanic jumble, the
oly koek and the round beignet, not to mention other round cake
shapes.
Should you require clarification of any of the links I have provided,
please request it before rating and closing this question and I will
be happy to respond. And thank you for asking such an interesting
question!
Best regards (and happy donut enjoyment),
journalist-ga
SEARCH STRATEGY:
"history of donuts"
"history of doughnuts"
"history of donuts" round
"history of doughnuts" round
Google Image search:
olykoek [no image found]
oly koeks [no image found]
olykoeken [no image found]
olie-koecken [no image found]
fastnachtkuches [no image found]
beignet http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=beignet&btnG=Google+Search
For entertainment purposes, see the parody of donut history at
http://www.geocities.com/doughnutopia/ |
