The Sacred Doughnut
- andrew63698
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
In its current draft, here are the doughnutting opening words of the soon-to-come The Briars Befogged:
I’m here again.
Each time I’ve fallen asleep since Sunday, I’ve found myself here. Is it a dream? I've never had a dream like this one. Either way, three nights in a row . . . this is annoying.
Darkness blankets me but for the partial moonlight and starlight reflecting from the snow. To my right and left, silhouettes of white cedar trees block off the rest of the woods, their boughs weighed down by the snow.
In front of me is a small circle, like a snow doughnut. My hand flies to my stomach, it grumbling at the thought.
Cinnamon and sugar doughnuts. Maybe Mom will let me make some.
I bite my lip. Or, maybe Jimmy and I can make some this weekend. A smile creeps onto my face, looking forward to my overnight with his family on Georgina Island.
But before that smile spreads far, my head tilts. The photo of “the Doughnut Girl” swims across my thoughts:
The Doughnut Dollies, making and serving doughnuts just miles from the front—wow. They were courageous.
Doughnut history
Doughnuts have been around for many centuries. Perhaps the idea came from China via Marco Polo, like ice cream, but most likely it was a universal accident that became a simple pleasure.
[No one has mentioned Marco Polo. That's just my imagination, a spin resulting from having young Michael Chiu serving youtiao to his new friends when they visit his family’s Chinese restaurant in Sutton in The Briars Believed.]
In the North American wilderness, doughnuts were a simple way for the settlers to store high-energy food to carry with them.
But doughnuts became a commercial product as a result of the Great War.
Served by Salvation Army volunteers when they escaped the trenches for a relief, soldiers craved the treat when they returned to Canada and the US.
Entrepreneurs stepped up, and the doughnut shop became as common as the Chinese restaurant in every North American town.
This Smithsonian Magazine (includes the Doughnut Dollies’ recipe):
“When women of the Salvation Army volunteered to join the front lines of World War I to support the American Expeditionary Force, they were given a few obvious supplies: gas masks, helmets and .45-calibre revolvers. But it turned out what they needed most were things much harder for the Army to supply: rolling pins, cookie cutters, flour and sugar…”
They ended up using shell casings and wine bottles to roll the dough, and eventually used an empty condensed milk tin and camphor ice to generate the “o” shape. [More Smithsonian doughnut history.]
In Canada and the USA, today is National Doughnut Day. It’s as good a reason as any for us to make some at the cottage, though we’ll use my daughter’s slightly healthier version of cooking in the air fryer—they are fantastic.
Parks Canada has this traditional Canadian recipe.
And if you want to learn more about the history, before you spend CA$41.95 to buy “The Donut – A Canadian History”, you may want to check this hilarious, and not too complimentary, Quill and Quire’s review. The University of Toronto publishes both!
For free, listen to this CBC’s North by Northwest fun episode.
Oh ... and doughnut vs. donut
The former is the traditional spelling, the latter—though it turned up once in a while beforehand—was used in several company names from the early 1930’s.
The spellings are now used interchangeably. But in 1919, "doughnut" was what they used.
Snack on!
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