Tuesday, June 22, 2021

The Doughnut on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The Doughnut was created on this day (June 22) in 1847 by an American 16 year old named Hanson Gregory. 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. 

The earliest mention of a dough-nut was in Washington Irving's 1809 book A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty:

"Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough-nuts, or oly koeks: a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families."

However, it does appear that doughnuts were described in the Bible at Leviticus 7:12.

Per capita, Canadians consume the most doughnuts, and Canada has the most doughnut stores per capita. Tim Hortons is the most popular Canadian doughnut and coffee franchise, and one of the most successful quick service restaurants in the country.

Guinness recorded the largest doughnut made was one which used up of 90,000 individual doughnuts in Sydney Australia in 2007 as part of a celebration for the release of The Simpsons Movie.

Over 10 billion doughnuts are made in America each year. Dunkin' Donuts ("America Runs on Dunkin") plans to open another 9000 locations. Krispy Kreme (headquartered in Winston-Salem) has 1005 locations. Ten people in the United States have the last name Doughnut or Donut. Boston has the most doughnut shops per person.

In France, doughnuts were called Nun's Farts (pets de nonne).

A German superstition states that eating jelly donuts on New Year's Eve will bring you good luck.

It is said that if you added a doughnut a day to your diet, you would gain about one extra pound every 10 days. A chocolate glazed doughnut has about 5 teaspoons of sugar. Renée Zellweger ate 20 doughnuts a day to gain weight for the Bridget Jones sequel. One man, Travis Mallouf, actually died while eating a doughnut. He choked trying to eat a half pound glazed donut as part of a challenge hosted by Voodoo Doughnuts in Denver in 2017.

In economics the size of the hole in a doughnut correlates with a good or bad economy. The worse the economy, the bigger the doughnut hole.

Heinz Schmitz

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