‘Doughnut’ is the traditional spelling, whilst ‘donut’ is the simplified version. The two terms are often used interchangeably in the English language.
Doughnuts are usually deep fried from a flour dough, but other types of batters can also be used. Various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar, chocolate, or maple glazing. Doughnuts may also include water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil, shortening, and natural or artificial flavors.
The earliest origins of modern doughnuts are generally traced back to the olykoek (“oil(y) cake”) Dutch settlers brought with them to early New York (or New Amsterdam). These doughnuts closely resembled later ones but did not yet have their current ring shape.
According to anthropologist Paul R. Mullins, the first cookbook mentioning doughnuts was an 1803 English volume that included doughnuts in an appendix of American recipes. He also traces its origins to the oliekoek that arrived in America with the Dutch settlers in the early 18th century. By the mid-19th century, the doughnut looked and tasted like today’s doughnut, and was viewed as thoroughly American food.
Hanson Gregory, an American, claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 aboard a lime-trading ship when he was 16 years old. Gregory was dissatisfied with the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship’s tin pepper box, and to have later taught the technique to his mother.
Another theory on their origin came to light in 2013, when a recipe for “dow nuts” was found in a book of recipes and domestic tips written around 1800, by the wife of Baron Thomas Dimsdale, the recipe being given to the dowager Baroness by an acquaintance who transcribed for her the cooking instructions for a “dow nut”.
An earlier recipe, for fried dough cakes, and dating to 1750, was published by an author from the same county, in The Country Housewife’s Family Companion by William Ellis. Daniela Galarza, for Eater, wrote that “the now-standard doughnut’s hole is still up for debate. [Food writer Michael Krondl] surmises that the shape came from recipes that called for the dough to be shaped like a jumble — a once common ring-shaped cookie. In Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People, culinary historian Linda Civitello writes that the hole was invented because it allowed the doughnuts to cook faster. By 1870 doughnut cutters shaped in two concentric circles, one smaller than the other, began to appear in home-shopping catalogues”.
Today, the two most common types are the ring doughnut and the filled doughnut, which is injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard, or other sweet fillings. Alternatively, small pieces of dough are sometimes cooked as doughnut holes. Once fried, doughnuts may be glazed with a sugar icing, spread with icing or chocolate on top, or topped with powdered sugar, cinnamon, sprinkles or fruit. Other shapes include rings, balls, flattened spheres, twists, and other forms.
According to en.wikipedia. Source of photos: internet
