Crullers

In essence, a cruller is a twisted piece of deep-fried sweet dough. It originated with the Dutch, who named it for its distinctive shape (the verb krullen means “to curl”). In practice, especially American practice, exceptions and variations abound—not only among the Dutch Americans whose forebears are credited with introducing the cruller to New York, but also among bakers of Scandinavian, Austrian, and Polish descent, each with their own twist (if you will) on the recipe. (Chinese crullers—by the name of you tiao or you char kway, which translates as “deep-fried devil”—even appear on many a dim sum cart, accompanied by congee or soy milk for dipping.) No ingredient save flour is completely indispensable, not even butter, sugar, milk, or eggs. Flavorings run the gamut from cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, lemon, and vanilla to wine, whiskey, rum, and even rose water (a suggestion from the seminal nineteenth-century cookbook author Eliza Leslie). The namesake shape is only one of many crullers may take. Various recipes specify diamonds, braids, corkscrews, cigars, rectangles, and even rings (whereupon they are dead ringers for doughnuts). Some are plain, others are glazed, dusted with sugar, or topped with syrup or jam. Finally, crullers are known by a slew of alternative names, including twist cakes, love knots, matrimony knots, angel wings, and Henriettes. Leslie knew them additionally as wonders, and Louisiana Cajuns proffer croquignoles.