Celebrate National Doughnut Day with a sprinkling of 10 sweet doughnut facts. Try not to glaze over them!
Happy National Doughnut Day to all who celebrate it (it was on Friday, as if you didn’t know, but we prefer to think of it as National Doughnut Weekend) and we’ve rounded up a hole lot of tasty facts about these doughy treats for the occasion.
1. Doughnuts are believed to have originated in the 18th century by the Dutch who served a sweet dish called an olykoek (oily cake). They didn’t have holes and were just balls of dough fried in oil.
2. There is debate over how the doughnut actually got its name. Some sources say it’s because nuts were added to the middle of the dough (this was because the dough was fried so quickly, the middles wouldn’t cook properly so the nuts would prevent an uncooked doughy centre). Others believe it was because the balls of dough looked like shrivelled walnuts once they were cooked.
3. The first recording in literature of the term “doughnut” was in 1809 by an American author called Washington Irving in his book ‘A History of New York’. He described them as “balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks.”
4. Putting a hole in a doughnut is credited to Hanson Gregory in 1847 when he was working at sea as a crewman on a lime trading schooner. He was 16 at the time.
5. While slightly different to American doughnuts there is a fried dough fritter, originally from France, called pets de nonne, which translates as ‘nun’s farts’.
6. Americans consume over 10 billion doughnuts annually.
7. The world’s most expensive doughnut is the Golden Cristal Ube. It was created at the Manila Social Club in Miami by Bjorn DelaCruz. It has a champagne filling, is covered in 24-karat gold and the dough and icing are infused with Cristal champagne. They are transported in a Rolls Royce and cost $1,200 for a dozen.
8. ‘Doughnut’ and ‘Donut’ are both considered accepted spellings. The former is the more traditional spelling while the latter is the more informal version.
9. The current world record for eating the most doughnuts in 8 minutes was set in July 2024 by a man named James Webb. He ate 70 glazed doughnuts in this time.
10. The current record for the world’s largest doughnut is held by Nick DiGiovanni and Lynn Davis. It weighed 225 pounds and was the equivalent to 1500 regular doughnuts. After the record was confirmed, the doughnut was donated to a homeless shelter.
READ MORE