I was sitting at Starbucks this morning drinking my Mocha latte and biting into a moist chocolate glazed, calorie laden doughnut feeling my cholesterol rise when a light bulb question went off in my mind. Where did the doughnut originate? I wondered almost out loudwho invented this tasty morning delight that every doctor tells us not to eat?

Like most food products, especially baked goods, there are many tales and trails that lead to various inventors and places of origination. The doughnut is no exception to that food fact. I will attempt to present the interesting history of the doughnut without eating too many, as I drink my coffee and munch, while relating the various accounts that cite the origin of the fried bakery dough all people love to splurge on when they think no one is looking.

ORIGINS OF THE DOUGHNUT/DONUT

It has been said that archaeologists have found petrified doughnuts at ancient dig sites in various parts of the world, but for the sake of historical veracity I will tell the history of the little fried dough bits starting from the point of recent historical verification (be that recent legends and facts).

Many historians give credit to a Dutch sailor named Captain Hanson Gregory (also known as Mason Crockett Hanson) who lived in New England, as being the inventor of the modern doughnut. Hanson's mother, Elizabeth was a fine baker and would make him "olykoek" ("oily cakes") to take on his sea journeys. The cakes she made did not have holes and the story goes that Hanson would impale the cakes on the ship's steering wheel, so he could eat as he navigated. "One story says that the sea captain invented the donut by impaling one of the cakes on the ship's steering wheel, to keep his hands free in a sudden storm, on June 22, 1847". Hanson liked the "oil cakes" better with a hole through the middle, because the center was always doughy gooey and didn't taste like the rest of the cake. From that point on the Dutchman had the ship's cook make the cakes with a hole cut out of the middle and the doughnut was born.

Another legendary twist to the Hanson story is that his mother Elizabeth made the "oil cakes" with fry dough and nuts, which she stuffed into the middle of the cakes. Hanson it is said hated the nuts and punched the center of the cakes out with his ship's steering wheel spindle. Thus the dough and nut cakes became known as doughnuts or fried cakes.

Another tradition says that bakers knew if the fried cakes had a hole cut

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