The origin of the doughnut is very ambiguous; to use a well-worn cliché you could say that it’s clear as mud.

But whilst its derivation may be muddled the snack is something of an American institution and a global phenomenon. From bakers to supermarket shelves through artisan bakers beset about reinventing the wheel, you’ll be able find the humble doughnut in some form.

Admittedly some high-end chefs and nutritionists may look down their noses and the ringed creation, but notwithstanding their best efforts there are still plenty of doughnut devotees out there.

Doughnuts have been around for centuries, in some form or another. Archaeologists have found fossilised fragments of proto-doughnuts in Native American middens and waste pits and the first ‘modern’ doughnut is believed to have been devised in a Manhattan kitchen, evolving from traditional Dutch ‘olykoeks’. Though as always seems to be the case this origin story is somewhat disputed: A couple of years ago the historian Dr Heather Falvery unearthed a book, dated c1800, which contained a recipe for ‘dow nuts’. Collated by a Baroness Elizabeth Dimsdale, the cooking guide mixed household tips with a number of food and snack ideas and, unfortunately, doesn’t refer to any original source material. The plot thickens….

But whatever the true derivation for the doughnut is, it has, over the years, constantly evolved. Never standing still it has been a canvas for people’s experiments. The addition of jam one day, the inclusion of cinnamon and flavouring into the dough mix the next; the doughnut enables chefs, bakers and domestic kings and queens to get creative in the kitchen. And need we remind you about the (in)famous cronut that took the social media and food-blogging world by storm not too long ago?

Even in its early years, the recipe fluctuated somewhat and people began to alter its construction.

There is a nice tale floating in the ephemeral sphere of the internet that states one Captain Gregory was the first person to create the ringed doughnut when, on a particularly hardy voyage across the seas he skewered a the ball of dough on a spoke of the ship’s wheel so that he could navigate with both hands. Sadly this tale appears to be folly: In an interview with the Boston Post at the turn of the 1900s he put denied that story and offered an alternative, more boring, take on how “the first doughnut hole ever seen by mortal eyes” was created: He used the top of a circular tin box.

A young Frenchman in the 1930s, Joe LeBeau, was perhaps the first person to truly capitalise upon his signature take on the doughnut, though, beset by hard times, he eventually sold his secret concoction to a New Orleans store owner named Ishmael Armstrong and his nephew Vernon Rudolph. Rudolph then went on to create the eponymous chain Krispy Kreme.

By this point doughnuts were becoming an increasingly commercial commodity in the changing landscape of the United States. Doughnut stalls were popular with everybody. The New Yorker effused about one particular shop that served the high rollers that spent their evenings at Broadway plays whilst during the Great Recession that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929 doughnuts were an affordable luxury for those struggling to make ends meet.

It was an incredibly patriotic snack too: Cheap to make, millions were handed out to US soldiers fighting on the frontline during World War One and so popular was the idea that when the country entered World War Two, doughnuts were the go to pick-me-up for homesick, exhausted and injured personnel once more.

A doughnut can be anything and everything. It’s something that’s quintessentially American despite being forged by an assortment of multi-national characters.