The Donut
My favorite is blueberry cake. This morning, I had an early meeting. It started at “o-dark-thirty,” which is a Texas-Cajun way of saying it was dark outside and 30 minutes after some hour, but, who cared, it was early. One of the good things about this early-every-Thursday-morning meeting is that we rotate bringing the donuts. These are about the only donuts I get (being health conscious and weight watching – many of you may know the drill). So, I will never stop attending this meeting and the meeting itself can never stop being held. It may be an eternal meeting, the first ever in the history of mankind, because it is a “Donut” meeting and who could, or would want to, stop such a thing. Today, I brought a dozen blueberry cake, three plain cake, three chocolate-chocolate cake, a mix of six other cakes (chocolate nut, vanilla nut, vanilla icing, maple icing, strawberry icing and powdered sugar) and a dozen plain glaze freshly sugar-coated out of the fryer. You do not forget such things. They are the stuff sweet dreams are made of. . . .
Where’d it come from?
The donut, I mean.
Marco Polo?
No.
Today, I am not using the Internet. Scandalous behavior, I know, but I was up early and I need to shock myself — “re-book” myself in my still extant library without a computer. Today, I a using a book, to wit: “Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things.” It is quite a witty tome and worth the reference.
On page 415, Panati states that the doughnut (known by me as simply “donut”) originated in 16th century Holland (perhaps the confectionery creation of an ancestral chef to the noble line of Queen Bea). Among the Dutch, the treat was known as an olykoek, or “oil cake,” because of its high oil content (being fried in oil, as it still is). The cake was made with sweetened dough (hence the “dough” or “do” in donut) and was in its original inception about the size of walnut (hence the “nut” in donut). The Pilgrims had stopped in Holland on their way to America. Well, it appears those Pilgrims developed an almost unnatural fondness for the little oily cakes (but not the name). They tossed a couple hundred dozen on board the ship for the trip (a little known bit of sea-faring culinary trivia), and, on arrival in New England — at the Rock named with their name, those industrious travelers promptly set up shop and renamed the New World cake the “doughnut.”
The donut was born — almost.
It was still just a little cake.
Enter, Hanson Gregory. . . .
Hanson lived in New England and eventually became a sea captain. But, in his formative years, sitting in the kitchen watching his mother — he, in his youth (as many of us do – or did) – he had his best idea ever. His mother was rolling out the dough and cutting out the cake shapes for a big batch of doughnuts. Young Hanson thought and remembered the soggy centers in last week’s cakes. When Mom turned her back, he reached over and poked holes in those round cake cut-outs. Spinning about, his mother was about to reprimand the young thinker, when she saw the magic of his invention. She tossed the punctured cakes and the holes into the fryer together. They were . . . wonderful, more uniform in texture and without that icky soggy center. The holes were good too. She hugged her brilliant son as they both sat down to a mid-morning munch of fresh doughnuts and donut holes.
At that, young Hanson Gregory invented the distinctively empty modern donut shape (which is the shape of the “o” in “donut”), and he invented the donut hole (which is also the shape of the “o” in “donut” and oh so tasty.)
A final note. . . .
Our book reports the following: “Today Hanson Gregory’s contribution . . . is remembered in his hometown of Rockport, Maine, by a bronze plaque, suggesting that in America, fame can be achieved even for inventing nothing.”
I like that.
Could you pass another donut over here?
And, a donut hole, if there’s one left.
They’re so light and tasty.
It’s almost like eating noting at all.
I wonder who invented them.
Now, you know that, too.
Good munching,
Grandpa Jim