The delicious doughnuts had existed since the beginning of time. In early colonial times, in US, Dutch immigrants discovered fried cake. So, the story goes—- a cow kicked a pot full of boiling oil over some pastry mix, thus inventing the golden-brown delight. Apparently, they didn’t share this great discovery with their homeland and the fried cakes became a staple in the harsh conditions that existed in the colony. Many historians credit the invention of the modern doughnut to a sailor, a Dutchman named Hanson Gregory. His mother, Elizabeth, was known to make a good olykoek, or oily cake. She made some for him to take on one of his voyages and she also sent along a recipe so his cook could make some for him too. These cakes didn’t have holes in them, however. If stories are to be believed, the sea captain invented the doughnut (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. The spoke drove a hole through the wheel, naturally. Gregory discovered that he liked the cake better with a hole in the middle and ordered his cook to make them that way for the rest of the voyage, thus introducing the famous hole shaped doughnut to the world. Interestingly, the first doughnut machine was invented in 1920, in New York City, by a man named Adolph Levitt, a refugee from czarist Russia. Levitt’s doughnut was a huge hit causing doughnuts to spread like wildfire.
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