Today MK Unigroup takes you on a tour of a bakery treat sold and loved all over the world: the donut. Let's look at its fascinating history.
First, a definition. A donut is a piece of fried dough with a cake-like crumb, shaped rather like a rubber ring. Donuts may be filled or unfilled, depending on the type. The key ingredients are wheat flour, sugar, eggs and fat, either butterfat or vegetable fat, plus other ingredients that give the donut its aroma and flavor.
The History of the Donut
The donut has been around for more than 400 years and began as a traditional sweet from the Netherlands. Back then it did not have a hole in the middle as it does today. It was simply a sweet fried dough, sometimes sprinkled with sugar, known in Dutch as 'olykoek', or 'oil cake', because the outside was crisp while the inside was soft and held oil in the dough.
In the early 17th century, Europeans emigrating to America brought this treat with them. Because it was round and about the size of a walnut, New Englanders gave it a new name, the donut, meaning a lump of dough the size of a walnut, as the treat itself contained no nuts at all.
The ring-shaped donut also has a history stretching back more than 100 years. It began in the mid-1800s with Dutch settlers living in America during the colonial era. Around 1847, Elizabeth Gregory, the mother of a New England ship's captain, added a variety of ingredients from her son's ship cargo, such as nutmeg, cinnamon and lemon peel, to fried dough to serve as provisions for his voyages. She placed hazelnuts in the center of the dough and called it a donut. The hole itself came from her son, Hanson Gregory, who disliked his mother's round donuts because they absorbed too much oil. He used a pepper shaker to punch a hole in the middle and taught his mother the technique.
When Hanson Gregory served donuts to guests at a party, they were greatly praised. Later, in the mid-19th century, misfortune struck: Hanson was burned alive after being accused of witchcraft. Even so, a commemorative stone plaque still honors Hanson Gregory in Clam Cove, Maine, as the man who gave the donut its hole.
Donut production reached a turning point with the first donut machine. In 1920 in New York City, Adolph Levitt, a refugee from Tsarist Russia, built his own donut-making machine, and donuts quickly became widespread. At the 1934 Chicago World's Fair, themed the Century of Progress, donuts became a hit, and automatic donut machines were also on display.
Today the donut is an extremely popular sweet in Thailand and around the world. In Thailand you can buy donuts everywhere, from leading donut brands in shopping malls and bakeries to street markets, with prices varying by location.
