The first recorded mention of doughnuts is found all the way back in 1485 in a Nuremberg cookbook, and Dutch settlers are believed to have brought the snack to America. Traditionally, doughnuts were made with yeast and so didn’t quite become the mass-produced, mass-consumed goodie that the late-1800s invention of pearlash, a precursor to baking powder, made possible. Even as they became a working-class favourite in the 1900s, two global events would shape how doughnuts were perceived.
During World War I, women volunteers with the Salvation Army were deputed to France to provide sustenance to the men enlisted in the Allied forces. Among their other responsibilities, the women prepared coffee and snacks for the servicemen, a task they found difficult given they were on the front lines of a raging battle, and cooking wasn’t exactly convenient in the circumstances. Two of the volunteers (Helen Purviance and Margaret Sheldon) hit upon the idea of making doughnuts the mainstay of their coffee service: doughnuts were quick, required few ingredients, stayed fresh for longer, and were easier to prepare in batches.
They used shell casings and wine bottles as their rolling pins, heated lard in a soldier’s helmet to deep fry the doughnuts, and used empty cans of condensed milk to cut the doughnuts into shape. On one day, Sheldon noted that she had made as many as 300 doughnuts to go with 700 cups of coffee. Purviance wrote to her family: “Well can you think of two women cooking, in one day, 2,500 doughnuts, eight dozen cupcakes, 50 pies, 800 pan cakes and 255 gallons of cocoa, and one other girl serving it? That is a day’s work.”
To the women, the deceptively simple act of providing doughnuts to the soldiers was a way of bringing some semblance of normalcy amid the horrors of war, to provide respite — no matter how brief or temporary — to the 16 and 17-year-olds who were sent to the trenches for long stretches of time.
The soldiers began referring to the women as “Doughnut Dollies” (or Donut Lassies) and it was a name that stuck to Sheldon and Purviance’s counterparts from a later era as well. During World War II, Doughnut Dollies were women volunteers of the American Red Cross Clubmobile Service — a mobile unit that offered “food, entertainment and a connection home” to soldiers stationed at various fronts. The volunteers were trained in how to prepare doughnuts and coffee in the mobile kitchen and would drive around the base, serving soldiers in need of a break.
Doughnut Dollies would also be called into service during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
(Photos via the US World War I Centennial Commission.)
September 14 is designated as National Cream-filled Doughnut Day. For more food stories, visit the Slurrp website or download the app.
