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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio,

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that serves up a fresh batch of history every

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Speaker 1: day of the week. I'm Gay, Bluesyay, and today we're

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Speaker 1: trying to answer the age old question of who put

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Speaker 1: the hole in the doughnut? And why? The day was

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Speaker 1: June twenty second, eighteen forty seven. According to culinary legend,

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Speaker 1: American sailor Hanson Gregory invented the ring shaped doughnut. He

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Speaker 1: was sixteen years old at the time and working as

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Speaker 1: a cabin boy aboard the merchant schooner Isaac Acorn. To

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Speaker 1: make the voyage more pleasant, Gregory brought along his favorite

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Speaker 1: comfort food, a batch of his mother's homemade donuts. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: there was no consistent shape for doughnuts in the mid

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Sometimes the dough would be twisted or cut

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Speaker 1: into crude squares, but for the most part, doughnuts were

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Speaker 1: just formless lumps that made it difficult to fry them evenly,

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Speaker 1: and as a result, most doughnuts of the day were

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Speaker 1: overly greasy and raw in the middle. The perfect recipe

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Speaker 1: for indigestion. Elizabeth Gregory's doughnuts were no exception, and on

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Speaker 1: June twenty second, her teenage son decided to do something

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Speaker 1: about it. He took the circular lid of the ship's

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Speaker 1: pepper box and used it to punch a hole in

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Speaker 1: the center of the dough. Once the greasy middle was

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Speaker 1: carved away, all that remained was a tasty wheel of

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Speaker 1: well fried dough, or, as Gregory would later claim, the

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Speaker 1: world's first ring shaped doughnut. No one knows the exact

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Speaker 1: origins of the doughnut, but humans have been eating some

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Speaker 1: form of sweetened fried dough for thousands of years. In

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Speaker 1: ancient Greece and Rome, for example, people would fry up

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Speaker 1: strips of pastry dough and glaze them with honey or

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Speaker 1: in some cases, with fish sauce. Centuries later, during the

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Speaker 1: Middle Ages, Arab chefs started frying small bits of unsweetened

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Speaker 1: yeast dough, which they would then slather in sugary syrup. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: cooks and countries like the Netherlands, Germany and England began

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Speaker 1: making fried fritters, which were essentially deep fried balls of dough,

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Speaker 1: an especially popular treat during Yule Tide festivals. But no

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Speaker 1: matter which culture you visited, either in ancient times or

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Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, you wouldn't have found a hole

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Speaker 1: in any of their fried dough treats. In fact, the

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Speaker 1: only known proof of a holy doughnut that predates Hans

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Speaker 1: and Gregory are a series of petrified fried cakes found

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Speaker 1: at Native American dig sites in the southwestern United States.

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Speaker 1: The remains of those cakes are thought to date back

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Speaker 1: to prehistoric time times Nadiche. One of them features a

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Speaker 1: hole right in the center. Still, it's unclear how Native

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Speaker 1: Americans would have prepared the fried doughnuts, if that's even

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Speaker 1: what they are, as it's kind of tough to work

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Speaker 1: out a recipe from fossilized food. In any case, the

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Speaker 1: closest ancestor to the doughnuts we know today is likely

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Speaker 1: a traditional Dutch treat called olely bulls or oly cokes.

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Speaker 1: The names translate to oil balls and oil cakes, and

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Speaker 1: they're pretty spot on descriptions of the dish. First Dutch

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Speaker 1: chefs would make a simple dough from flour, eggs, yeast,

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Speaker 1: and baking powder. Then they'd add in nuts, dried fruit,

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Speaker 1: or citrus zest, roll the dough into balls, and fry

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Speaker 1: them up in lard. In the sixteen hundreds Dutch immigrants

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Speaker 1: arrived in what's now New York City, and they brought

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Speaker 1: their recipes for oil cakes with them. Other colonists embraced

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Speaker 1: the decadent treats for obvious reasons, and somewhere along the line,

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Speaker 1: they started calling them doughnuts. One of the earliest appearances

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Speaker 1: of the word is in Washington Irving's eighteen o nine

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Speaker 1: parody history book titled A History of New York from

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Speaker 1: the Beginning of the World to the End of the

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Speaker 1: Dutch Dynasty. In one section, Irving draws a clear line

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Speaker 1: between oil cakes and doughnuts, describing the dish as quote

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Speaker 1: balls of sweetened dough fried in hog's fat and called

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Speaker 1: doughnuts or olycokes. It's easy enough to work out the

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Speaker 1: dough part of the name, but the nut is a

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Speaker 1: little trickier. Some etymologists believe it's a reference to the small,

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Speaker 1: round shape of early doughnuts, which looked a bit like nuts,

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Speaker 1: especially once they were fried. Another theory is that the

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Speaker 1: nut refers to literal nuts, such as hazel nuts or walnuts,

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Speaker 1: which were sometimes chopped and placed in the center of

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Speaker 1: a doughnut instead of fruit. Either way, it's clear that

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Speaker 1: The term doughnut was use long before Hanson Gregory came along,

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Speaker 1: but while the New England sailor didn't invent the name

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Speaker 1: or the food itself, many would argue that he did

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Speaker 1: perfect it. Hanson Gregory was born in Knox County, Maine,

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Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty one, and first went to sea at

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Speaker 1: age thirteen. His mother, Elizabeth, always packed a box of

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Speaker 1: fried dough pastries for her son and the rest of

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Speaker 1: the crew, and as time went on, she started adding

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Speaker 1: ingredients from the trading ship's cargo, including nutmeg, cinnamon, and

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Speaker 1: lemon rind, which may have been an attempt to ward

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Speaker 1: off scurvy. According to Gregory, it was three years into

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Speaker 1: his career at sea that he hit upon the idea

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Speaker 1: of putting holes in his mother's doughnuts. Several versions of

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Speaker 1: the story have circulated over the years, including differing accounts

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Speaker 1: from Gregory himself, but the most widely accepted is the

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Speaker 1: one he told The Washington Post in nineteen sixteen. The

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Speaker 1: colorful account is a little too long to reach in full,

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Speaker 1: but here's the taste quote. In them days, we used

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Speaker 1: to cut the doughnuts into diamond shapes and also into

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Speaker 1: long strips bent in half and then twisted. I don't

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Speaker 1: think we called them donuts. Then, they was just fried

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Speaker 1: cakes and twisters. Well, sir, they used to fry all

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Speaker 1: right around the edges, but when you had the edges done,

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Speaker 1: the insides was all raw dough. And the twisters used

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Speaker 1: to stop up all the grease just where they bent,

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Speaker 1: and they were tough on the digestion. Well, I says

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Speaker 1: to myself, Why wouldn't a space inside solve the difficulty?

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Speaker 1: I thought at first I'd take one of the strips

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Speaker 1: and roll it around. Then I got an inspiration, a

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Speaker 1: great inspiration. I took the cover off the ship's tin

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Speaker 1: pepper box and I cut into the middle of that doughnut,

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Speaker 1: the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes. Well, sir,

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Speaker 1: them doughnuts was the finest I ever tasted. No more indigestion,

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Speaker 1: no more greasy sinkers, just well done fried through donuts.

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Speaker 1: After returning home from his fateful voyage, Gregory taught his

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Speaker 1: mother the secret to ring shaped donuts, and she started

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Speaker 1: selling them locally herself, reportedly to great success. By the

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Speaker 1: time Gregory sat down for an interview with The Post,

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Speaker 1: the Holy donut had become popular, not just in Maine,

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Speaker 1: but all over the country and even in the trenches

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Speaker 1: of Europe. During World War One, the Salvation Army fried

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Speaker 1: donuts with a hole in the middle to raise money

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Speaker 1: for the war effort. The organization also set up canteens

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Speaker 1: and towns near the front lines, serving coffee and donuts

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Speaker 1: to soldiers in need of a pick me up. The

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Speaker 1: women who ran those outfits were nicknamed donut Dollies, and

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Speaker 1: their service was such a welcome comfort that it was

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Speaker 1: offered again during future conflicts, including World War II and

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Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. As for Hanson Gregory, who eventually became

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Speaker 1: a captain of his own ship, he passed away in

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one at the age of eighty nine. By then,

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Speaker 1: he'd been widely accepted as the inventor of the modern donut,

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Speaker 1: a credit he continues to hold, deservedly or not, to

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Speaker 1: this very day. I'm Gabe Lucia and hopefully you now

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Speaker 1: know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's episode, consider keeping up with us

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show. And

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Speaker 1: if you have any feedback you'd like to share, feel

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Speaker 1: free to get in touch by writing to This Day

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Speaker 1: at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben

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Speaker 1: Hackett for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.

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Speaker 1: I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day

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Speaker 1: in history class