Did You Know: Doughnuts?

 by Nathaniel Gingell



Traces of fried dough foods have been found in prehistoric settlements in America and sweetened fried doughs were popular with the ancient Romans and Greeks.

Dutch immigrants in 17th- and 18th-century New York, then New Netherland, prepared fried dough balls called olie koeken or olykoeks, which means “oil cakes.” They were fried in hog’s fat.

Doughnuts were served to soldiers in World War 1 by the women of The Salvation Army in France as a treat to remind the soldiers of home. They used empty shell casings as rolling pins and fried them in lard in a soldier’s helmet.

National Doughnut Day has been going since World War 1. This year it is on June 7th.

The original doughnuts didn’t have holes and were the size and shape of a walnut. Hence the name doughnut.

Americans consume over 10 billion doughnuts a year. Rhode Islanders consume the most, with a choux pastry version being the most popular, called a cruller.

Per capita Canadians eat the most doughnuts a year.  They buy many from a coffee and doughnut shop called Tim Hortons. They have at least 21 different flavour doughnut. Yum.

The nearest Tim Hortons to Portsmouth is in Chichester. Try the Timbits for breakfast.

If you’re feeling adventurous you might like to try the French doughnut called Pete de Soeur, which translates as nun’s puffs…or nun’s farts.


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