Although National Doughnut Day
is in early June, I'm doing doughnuts today because they
were invented on this date in 1847, by a 16 year old sailor who
disliked the cakes he was served aboard ship because they were raw in
the middle. He came up with the idea of punching a hole in the middle
with a pepper pot, and when it worked, went home and told his mother
the technique.
- The first doughnuts were made by Dutch settlers in the US. They called them oliekoeks (a Dutch word literally meaning "oil cake").
- Having said that, archaeologists have found fossilized remains of a similar food in ancient Native American settlements.
- It is thought that the first doughnuts were made by mistake when a cow accidentally kicked over a pot of oil which landed in the pastry.
- The records for eating doughnuts are 29 in six minutes, and the fastest time for eating one is 33 seconds.
- Doughnuts were distributed to American troops in both world wars, to give them a taste of home. They were handed out by female volunteers who came to be known as "doughnut girls" in World War I and "doughnut dollies" in World War II.
- The first machine for making doughnuts was invested by Adolph Levitt, a refugee from Russia, in 1920.
- Why do doughnuts have holes? Apparently so they cook more evenly. In the world of business, nothing is ever wasted - "doughnut holes", little balls of deep fried dough, are also sold as snacks.
- Dunking doughnuts became popular in 1934 when Clark Gable was seen doing it in a film called It Happened One Night. However, he wasn't the first person to dunk a doughnut, according to legend. It was an actress called Mae Murray who accidentally dropped a doughnut into her coffee.
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