“Dutch settlers are credited for bringing DOUGHNUTS to the United States in the 1800’s. They were first called olykoeks, or oily cakes.”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 5,000 AWESOME FACTS, FACT #18 ON DECADENT DESSERTS

In 1622 Dutch settlers came to America in the region known as New York today, but called the New Netherlands and consisted of what is now New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

They brought over what was called olie koeken, or oily cakes. There is no hard proof they were the first ones to come up with the doughnut but it was cemented in a 17th century cookbook called De Verstandige Kock, or The Sensible Cook. (https://scalar.usc.edu/works/doughnuts-and-the-salvation-army/dutch-doughnuts)

Ingredients included flour, eggs, milk, apple and yeast. Yeast would cause the dough to rise but didn’t quite complete the process so once the dough rose to a certain level the dough balls would be thrown in hot oil.

The word dough nut would be attributed to a Washington Irving in his 1809 The History of New York. The dough nuts became incredibly popular in America, especially after the Revolutionary War.

According to Dutch folklore, in 1796 the first dough nut shop was opened in Manhattan by a Mrs. Joralemon, a Dutch housewife.

The doughnut with a hole is widely credited to an American seafarer named Hanson Gregory in 1847, who was only 16 at the time. It is stated that he was dissatisfied with the consistency inside a doughnut because of it not always being cooked fully and kind of doughy. The outside edges were always crispy, yet not the middle. So he came up with the idea to “punch a hole in the middle” of the cakes so it would cook uniformly.

“When dough is placed in a fryer, the outsides and edges will cook quickly, because they’re exposed to the hot oil. To fully cook the insides of the dough, the dough would have to stay in the oil for a longer time, which would lead to the outsides becoming burnt.” (https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-do-donuts-have-holes) Hence, get rid of the middle part.

The spelling of “donut” became popular in the 1920s, but the correct spelling is doughnut.

However, doughnut holes don’t come from the hole being punched out of the center of it. There are special machines that spray dough into a special fryer in a circular pattern. Doughnut holes from stores are just doughnuts cut into small pieces.

But I still like to think they were cut out of the hole in the doughnut!