Fat Free Middle

It is possible to overthink things.

Take our everyday need to eat.

It could be a simple snack on the go or a more involved and structured recipe.

Yet in involving ourselves with the ingredients and methods of a meal we are participating in a homage to the history of mankind, the trials and errors of past civilisations emerging from a hunter-gatherer existence to an agricultural based society, slavery, war over resources and huge changes in culture and lifestyle.

We seem to be at a crossroads at the present time with thoughts on, for example, reducing our intake of meat and moving across (although actually reverting)  to a plant based diet that in in effect what our ancestors thrived on all of those centuries ago.

In this way I have found myself taking the trouble to find out more about the stories behind particular foodstuffs.

This is not so much from the point of view of provenance, authenticity and food security which again are increasingly important considerations in our lives but the quirky and often contentious origins of what we accept as mundane and common products in our everyday consumption.

As an example, take the humble doughnut or in the American spelling, Donut.

Although not at all a healthy item this confection or dessert has been around in various forms since at least the late 18th and early 19th centuries although its simplistic flour dough composition suggests that it hearkens from much farther back in time, at least as long as bread and other baked products have been essential parts of a staple diet for a good proportion of the population of the world.

The doughnut remains as a popular purchase in particular as a natural, sweet accompaniment to a cup of coffee or in its own right as a means for a rapid intake of sugar and carbohydrate for refuelling in a busy existence.

There are two broad types from the full and filled to the distinctive ring doughnut.

It is this latter version that has an interesting back story.

The invention of a doughnut with a hole has always been claimed by a seafaring American, eventually rising to the position of Captain , one Hansen Gregory.

The inspiration , he claimed, came to him at the young age of 16 whilst he was just a humble crew member on a lime-trading schooner.

This is where rumour, gossip, hearsay , speculation and not a little confusion arises.

One version is that he was struggling to eat a dough ball whilst on duty at the wheel of a vessel on a particularly stormy night and to assist in digestion and navigation he squashed the item onto the handles of the wheel which gave him the idea of intentionally making a hole, as in to improve handling. The name of the ship was the Donati.

In tandem is the story that he found the fried cakes to be nicely cooked and browned on the outside but often as not completely raw in the middle. This made for an unpleasant surprise. By excavating the middle part this undercooked aspect could be avoided. Yet another version is that Hansen Gregory's Mother was the culprit in poor cooking and he came to her rescue by pushing out the raw middles

Hansen Gregory developed this idea and in his own words explained how he had taken the cover off the ship's pepper mill and used it to fashion out a perfectly round hole in an otherwise solid blob of dough.

Others have speculated that when fellow crew members fell overboard they struggled to keep afloat because of their over consumption of stodgy fried cakes. Hansen Gregory resolved this, apparently by again pushing out the middle. Is it pure coincidence that the subsequent appearance of a ring doughnut is similar to that of a life belt or preserver?

The doughnut cutter was developed further and was soon widely used by bakers and cooks throughout the United States.

The modern ring doughnut gave Hansen Gregory fame and recognition but obviously not great wealth in that he stayed at sea for his adult working life.

On a timeline for doughnuts there is some credibility in his claims.

Born in 1832 his light-bulb moment in the wheelhouse will have been in or around 1848. This is a good decade before popular doughnut recipes appeared in magazines and cookery books.

In American culinary history tin doughnut cutters were not produced on a large scale until after the Civil War.

Such was the debate over the origins of the ring doughnut that in 1941 the American Donut Corporation sponsored a debate held at the Astor Hotel, New York City.

In addition to Hansen Gregory there was another strong contender. This was reputed to have been a Nauset Indian who in an act of aggression against Pilgrim Pioneers shot an arrow through fried cakes as they cooked in fat in a pan. Upon returning after the hostilities the same woman found the first ringed doughnut.

Sadly, the doughnut has always been snubbed by those responsible for giving awards for product and achievements in the Baking World and although Hansen Gregory was nominated for a place in the Baking Hall of Fame, and posthumously as he died in 1921, he never actually made it to the top table, as they say.