DONUTS: America's favourite treat

Have you ever eaten a donut?

The doughnut or donut is a deep-fried dessert, with glaze on the surface. The dough can be filled with cream or fruit preserves. It's Homer Simpson's favourite treat!

Of course doughnuts in some form or other have been around so long that archaeologists keep turning up fossilized bits of what look like doughnuts in the middens of prehistoric Native American settlements. But the doughnut proper came to Manhattan (then still New Amsterdam) under the unappetizing Dutch name of olykoeks..."oily cakes".

In the mid-19th century Elizabeth Gregory, the mother of a New England ship captain's, used to make a deep-fried dough using her son's spice cargo of nutmeg and cinnamon, along with lemon rind. Some say she made it so son Hanson and his crew could store a pastry on long voyages. In any case, Mrs. Gregory put hazelnuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through, and in a literal-minded way called them doughnuts.

Her son decided to put the hole in the centre, maybe to make it easier to digest, others say that he gave the doughnut its shape when, needing to keep both hands on the wheel in a storm.

Donuts became more popular during the first World War, when volunteers in France cooked them for the soldiers to have a taste of home.

The first doughnut machine did not come along until 1920, in NYC and then the idea spread.

National Doughnut Day is celebrated on June 05, 2015, succeeding the Doughnut Day event created by The Salvation Army in 1938 to honor the women who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I. This June observance takes place on the first Friday of June each year and celebrates the doughnut, also known as "donut".