Rick Smith/Columnist
Val Lou looked at Cousin Gary like he had come unhinged when he made an unthinkable announcement at the breakfast table.
“Say again!” she replied.
He blinked, wondering what he had said that earned him a look that registered somewhere between amusement and disdain.
“I think Krispy Kreme Doughnuts are the best donuts,” he ventured, looking all wild-eyed and crazy.
“Kinfolks have gotten disowned for less nonsense than that,” she countered. “Everybody who’s anybody knows that Shipley fries up the BEST donuts known to man this side of, uh…” She searched for the right word, gave up, and blurted, “Over yonder.”
We fellow cousins never forgot that confectionary lesson. From that day forward, every time Gary passed a donut shop, his PTSD went crackers, leaving him incontinent.
Who makes the best donuts? It’s a discussion that has occurred in every employee lounge, money-spinning boardroom, and legislative chamber across the New World.
The humble doughnut’s convoluted past involves Dutch immigrants, Russian exiles, French bakers, Irving Berlin, and Clark Gable. The donut is said to have come to Manhattan (then still New Amsterdam) under the unappetizing Dutch name of olykoeks – “oily cakes.”
Donuts didn’t come into their own until World War I when American soldiers returned from war with memories of donuts served by French mademoiselles.
The first doughnut machine came along in 1920, in New York City, when Adolph Levitt, a Russian refugee, began selling fried doughnuts from his bakery. By 1931, Levitt’s machines were earning him an intoxicating $25 million a year. At the 1934 World’s Fair in Chicago, donuts were billed as “the food hit of the Century of Progress.”
That same year, Clark Gable taught Claudette Colbert how to dunk a donut in the film “It Happened One Night.”
It was in the 1930’s that Joe LeBeau, a Frenchman, sold his secret recipe to a local store owner named Ishmael Armstrong. Krispy Kreme was born.
In 1936, Lawrence Shipley, Sr., created his original recipe for hot, fresh, handcrafted donuts. A few years later he opened his first Shipley Do-Nut shop in Houston, Texas.
War was a profitable shot in the arm of doughnut consumption. Red Cross women, later known as Doughnut Dollies, doled them out during World War II. In his 1942 Army musical, Irving Berlin romanticized the doughnut further with a soldier who loses his heart at the Broadway’s Stage Door Canteen.
Ms. Ellie introduced me to the Shipley Do-nut shop on North Main Street in Houston, open 24/7 and known for frying their donuts a few seconds longer, resulting in a beautiful golden-brown color. Fry times are posted, and cars wrap around the building.
Sadly, nutritionists, who like to point out that the average doughnut can carry a whomping 300-calorie fender bender to one’s diet, do not advocate for doughnut consumption. Let’s face it, they’re mainly sugar and fat.
So, whether you’re a Shipley guy or a Krispy Kreme gal, know that Americans consume more than 10 billion donuts annually. Val Lou was right; Shipley fries up the best donuts! A lesson Cousin Gary will never forget.
Rick Smith is a Jeffersonian and can be reached at theriquemeister@gmail.com.