Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut [Hardcover]

Prof. Paul R. Mullins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2008

In Mullins's skillful hands, this simple pastry provides surprisingly compelling insights into our eating habits, our identity, and modern consumer culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the latest cultural-historical look at a beloved American foodstuff, anthropologist Mullins (Race and Affluence) offers a rather tangled explanation of the doughnut's origin, popularity and significance. Technically, the doughnut is probably Chinese in origin, though the Germans, French and Latin Americans also have valid claims; Mullins finds the 1669 Dutch recipe for "olie-koecken" most closely resembles today's beloved fried breakfast pastries. Mullins finds that for many immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, a jelly doughnut was the first food they tasted, permanently tying the pastry in new arrivals' minds to what it means to be American (though Canadians, who have a higher per capita rate of doughnut shops, may have a different opinion). Though occasionally subject to long-winded (largely pointless) academic digressions, Mullins' take on a much-maligned food is multifaceted and largely interesting. He introduces readers to the inventor of the doughnut hole, Captain Hanson Gregory, explores the traditional marriage of cops and doughnuts, looks at the brand loyalties of different demographics, and investigates the food's impact on public health with aplomb and curiosity. For those who can suffer the cravings, this makes a satisfying tour.
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Book Description

A trip through the doughnut hole to learn what a humble circle of fried dough tells us about ourselves

 

"Mullins does a fine job of examining the doughnut not as a singular thing or symbol, but as a complex object that elicits many subtly different--sometimes contradictory--ideas about us. He grapples with the complicated social history of this particular food item not by merely examining its physical history, but by tracing the rich and complicated connections between doughnuts and people across time, space, ethnic identity, and national boundaries."--Jamie C. Brandon, coeditor of Household Chores and Household Choices

 

Everybody loves a good doughnut. The magic combination of soft dough, hot oil, and sugar coating--with or without sprinkles--inspires a wide range of surprisingly powerful memories and cravings. Yet we are embarrassed by our desire; the favorite food of Homer Simpson, caricatured as the dietary cornerstone of cops, a symbol of our collective descent into obesity, doughnuts are, in the words of one California consumer, a "food of shame."

 

Paul Mullins turns his attention to the simple doughnut in order to learn more about North American culture and society. Both a breakfast staple and a snack to eat any time of day or night, doughnuts cross lines of gender, class, and race like no other food item. Favorite doughnut shops that were once neighborhood institutions remain unchanged--even as their surrounding neighborhoods have morphed into strip clubs, empty lots, and abandoned housing.

 

Blending solid scholarship with humorous insights, Mullins offers a look into doughnut production, marketing, and consumption. He confronts head-on the question of why we often paint doughnuts in moral terms, and shows how the seemingly simple food reveals deep and complex social conflicts over body image and class structure.

 

In Mullins's skillful hands, this simple pastry provides surprisingly compelling insights into our eating habits, our identity, and modern consumer culture.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Florida; 1st edition (September 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813032385
• ISBN-13: 978-0813032382
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #903,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beloved and Detested Sweet Treat, August 12, 2008

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut (Hardcover)

"Tell me what you eat," said that philosopher of the kitchen Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "and I will tell you what you are." What would he make of a nation which has the doughnut as one of the foods the world knows it by? What does it mean that doughnuts are defined as a particularly American food? Perhaps an anthropologist could tell us, and in the surprising and enlightening _Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut_ (University Press of Florida), anthropologist Paul R. Mullins has done so. Indeed, he has found those who say that a Krispy Kreme shop makes them proud to be Americans, and those who regard a shop as a shrine with pilgrims and converts. "It may seem absurd," Mullins writes, "that an apparently innocuous doughnut could be wrapped in the flag and lent an air of religiosity, but few dimensions of our world say as much about us as food." We do, however, have mixed feelings about our doughnuts. We may like them, but even those of us who like them know they are not really good for us, and there are those who hate them because they represent decadence or foolish food choices. Doughnuts, then, have a disputed symbolism, and their marketing and consumption can be mined, surprisingly, for various insights into American life.

The book reproduces a 1627 still life painting by Juan van der Hamen y Leon which shows pastries of the torus shape anyone would now recognize. This particular shape had one of its first mentions in print in 1877. That the toroidal shape certainly pre-dates cookbooks or oil paintings did not prevent an American from claiming invention of the doughnut hole. Captain Hanson Gregory, a cook at sea, found that the soggy and greasy doughnuts he was making resisted becoming more digestible by changing their ingredients, but once he lessened the lumps of dough by cutting a hole out, changing the shape made all the difference. He was nominated to the National Doughnut Hall of Fame for his contribution; the nomination read in part that he "not only discovered the hole in the first place, but invented the proper process for enclosing the hole in the doughnut." The Doughnut Corporation of America thus in the 1940s attempted to certify the appeal of assigning the origin of the hole in the doughnut to a New England seafarer. This is the same company that produced what Mullins says is "an ideologically distorted 1944 account" which claimed that the Pilgrims themselves brought their treasured doughnut recipe with them to the New World on the _Mayflower_.

In 2005, Florida governor Jeb Bush tried to strike a blow for Republicans within blue collar workers, when he wanted to know how many tax cuts Democrats had proposed for "Joe Bag of Donuts." In this, he was able to avoid reference to the drinking habits of Joe Six Pack, but Mullins shows that the consumption of doughnuts transcends economic class. However, the great spokesman for the doughnut is that industrial worker Homer Simpson, who gets four pages of coverage here in acknowledgment of his addiction. Mullins writes, "In _The Simpsons'_ hands, doughnuts are an especially powerful mechanism to examine the limits of desire, since doughnuts seem to have no significant redeeming feature besides the pleasure their ingestion produces." This "bad" characteristic has been the focus of the moralizing about doughnuts as early as 1846, and the importation of American doughnut franchises to other countries has been called "`calorie colonialism' planned by corporate America". The moral connection links cops to doughnuts, too; perhaps doughnut shops encourage being frequented by cops to keep robberies down, and perhaps, as one policeman argued, doughnut shops are easy places for cops to meet to discuss and solve crimes. Perhaps also they get free doughnuts (although any police force has rules against this), but there is no perhaps that doughnut shops remind citizens of the policeman's reputation for sloth and corruption. On a lighter note, wedding cakes are made from Krispy Kremes; one such record-breaker weighed over a ton, but many brides opt for a smaller version. In Portland, Oregon, Voodoo Doughnuts has doughnuts for weddings, and since the proprietors are ordained ministers, they offer weddings in the store. Mullins, as you can tell from this little summary, has pulled many facets of a humble luxury food together in a serious but entertaining study that answers in diverse ways the question, "What does the doughnut mean?"

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring. Not worth the money., March 11, 2010

By 

J. Furr "Jay Furr" (Richmond, VT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut (Hardcover)

I don't have the time or inclination to write an excessively long review like the guy who gave this book five stars, but on the other hand, I'm not an employee of the publisher, as the other reviewer appears to be. This book wasn't worth the money I spent on it; it's boring and not much of a read. If you're that curious about the subject, check it out from your local public library instead.