Doughnuts

The word doughnut itself is apparently American, but the idea of deep-frying small pieces of dough belongs to many older cultures. In Italy, they call these yeast-dough fritters zeppole, in France beignets, in Spain buñuelos. They are all ways to use up leftover bread dough. But none of these “doughnuts” led to our toroidal snack. All evidence and all authorities agree that our doughnut came to us from Holland. The first occurrence of the word cited in the