The doughnut is a lump of dough whose entire purpose was to be boiled in pig fat. The Dutch brought it to New Amsterdam and called it an olykoek, an oily cake. Washington Irving described the settlers' tables in 1809: "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat". It is one of the first doughnuts in print, and the hog gets equal billing. It was a slaughter-season food. A pig killed in November left a household with more fresh lard than it knew what to do with, and a kettle of it over the fire would turn flour and an egg into something a farmhand would cross a county for. In Catholic Europe the same thing happened in the last days before Lent, when the lard had to be used up. The Germans fried Fastnachts, the Poles fried pączki, and the day was called Fat Thursday. In 1917 the Salvation Army sent women to the front in France who fried them in lard, seven at a time, and handed them to American soldiers standing in the mud. The men came home wanting doughnuts. Then the shortening companies arrived with a cheaper fat made from cottonseed and a great deal of advertising, and the pig was written out of the recipe. What is sold now is the same dough, fried in an oil that did not exist when the recipe was written, and glazed. The doughnut has been blamed for a great many waistlines. For 300 years it was fried in lard and eaten by people who dug canals by hand.
— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) November 14, 2026
The doughnut is a lump of dough whose entire purpose was to be boiled in pig fat.
The Dutch brought it to New Amsterdam and called it an olykoek, an oily cake. Washington Irving described the settlers' tables in 1809: "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat". It is one of the first doughnuts in print, and the hog gets equal billing.
It was a slaughter-season food. A pig killed in November left a household with more fresh lard than it knew what to do with, and a kettle of it over the fire would turn flour and an egg into something a farmhand would cross a county for. In Catholic Europe the same thing happened in the last days before Lent, when the lard had to be used up. The Germans fried Fastnachts, the Poles fried pączki, and the day was called Fat Thursday.
In 1917, the Salvation Army sent women to the front in France who fried them in lard, seven at a time, and handed them to American soldiers standing in the mud. The men came home wanting doughnuts.
Then the shortening companies arrived with a cheaper fat made from cottonseed and a great deal of advertising, and the pig was written out of the recipe.
What is sold now is the same dough, fried in an oil that did not exist when the recipe was written, and glazed.
The doughnut has been blamed for a great many waistlines. For 300 years it was fried in lard and eaten by people who dug canals by hand.
