[1][2]: 275  It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty vendors.

A recipe for a deep-fried dough ball was recorded by Cato the Elder in his de agri cultura, using cheese, honey, and poppy seeds, called globi.

[15] One of the earliest mentions of "dough-nut" was in Washington Irving's 1809 book A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty:[16] Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough-nuts, or oly koeks: a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families.The name oly koeks was almost certainly related to the oliekoek: a Dutch delicacy of "sweetened cake fried in fat.

In Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People, culinary historian Linda Civitello writes that the hole was invented because it allowed the doughnuts to cook faster.

"[46] The physical structure of the doughnut is created by the combination of flour, leavening agent, sugar, eggs, salt, water, shortening, milk solids, and additional components.

When heat is applied to the dough, the egg proteins will begin to unfold, or denature, and then form new bonds with one another, thus creating a gel-like network that can hold water and gas.

[53] According to Prevention Magazine, doughnuts made from enriched flour provide some thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin, along with some fiber, but they are high in sugar and calories.

A very inexpensive treat for everyday Cambodians, this sweet pastry consists of a jasmine rice flour dough moulded into a classic ring shape and then deep fried in fat, then drizzled with a palm sugar toffee and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

A spherical food called saa1 jung (沙翁), which is also similar to a cream puff but denser with a doughnut-like texture and usually prepared with sugar sprinkled on top, is normally available in dim sum Cantonese restaurants.

An oilier Beijing variant of this called 高力豆沙, gaoli dousha, is filled with red bean paste; originally, it was made with egg white instead of dough.

Chinese restaurants in the United States sometimes serve small fried pastries similar to doughnut holes with condensed milk as a sauce.

[56] In North India, it is in the form of a bulging disc called dahi-vada, and is soaked in curd, sprinkled with spices and sliced vegetables, and topped with a sweet and sour chutney.

[65][67][68] Mochi donuts made from glutinous rice flour "typically contain half the amount of calories as the standard cake or yeast doughnut".

A semiliquid dough is usually prepared by adding milk, water, sugar, butter, cardamom, and mashed banana to rice flour, which is often left to ferment for up to 24 hours.

Shakoy or siyakoy from the Visayas islands (also known as lubid-lubid in the northern Philippines) uses a length of dough twisted into a distinctive rope-like shape before being fried.

They are especially popular during Carnival season (Fasching), and do not have the typical ring shape, but instead are solid and usually filled with apricot jam (traditional) or vanilla cream (Vanillekrapfen).

[citation needed] in Finland, a sweet doughnut is called a munkki (the word also means monk) and are commonly eaten in cafés and cafeteria restaurants.

[90] Doughnuts similar to the Berliner are prepared in the northern Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia and Serbia (pokladnice or krofne).

Italian doughnuts include ciambelle, krapfen from Trentino-Alto Adige, zippuli or zeppole from Calabria and Campania, maritozzi from Latium, above all Rome, bomboloni from Tuscany, frittelle from Veneto and many others.

[citation needed] In the Netherlands, oliebollen, referred to in cookbooks as "Dutch doughnuts", are a type of fritter, with or without raisins or currants, and usually sprinkled with powdered sugar.

In Poland and parts of the U.S. with a large Polish community, like Chicago and Detroit, the round, jam-filled doughnuts eaten especially—though not exclusively—during the Carnival are called pączki (pronounced [ˈpɔntʂkʲi]).

The second type of doughnut is a traditional pastry called rosquilla or rosquete (the latter name is typical in the Canary Islands), made of fermented dough and fried or baked in an oven.

[citation needed] The churro is a sweet pastry of deep-fried dough similar to a doughnut but shaped as a long, thin, ribbed cylinder rather than a ring or sphere.

In regions of the country where apples are widely grown, especially the Northeast and Midwest states, cider doughnuts are a harvest season specialty, especially at orchards open to tourists, where they can be served fresh.

Mobile vans that serve doughnuts, traditional or jam, are often seen at spectator events, markets, carnivals and fetes, and by the roadside near high-traffic areas like airports and the car parks of large shopping centres.

This cliché has been parodied in the film Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, where Officer Zed is instructing new recruits how to "properly" consume their doughnuts with coffee.

During a citywide "lockdown" after the Boston Marathon bombing, a handful of selected Dunkin' Donuts locations were ordered to remain open to serve police and first responders despite the closing of the vast majority of city businesses.

This phenomenon has been attributed to Ted Ngoy and Ning Yen, refugees of the Cambodian genocide who began to transform the local doughnut shop industry in 1976.

They proved so adept at the business and in training fellow Chinese Cambodian refugees to follow suit that these local doughnut shops soon dominated native franchises such as Winchell's Donuts.

Ngoy and Yen allegedly planned to purchase boxes of a lucky red color rather than the standard white, but settled on a leftover pink stock because of its lower cost.