The Doughnut Corporation of America
For my first posting, I decided to begin with a bang. Or begin with a donut, as the case may be.I bring you a great cookbook I found with my grandmother's things. 36 Delightful Recipes looks very innocent, cute and small. At just 15 pages it's more of a pamphlet than an actual receipe book. It isn't until you open its cute cover to you realize the depth of its evil:
Doesn't seem so bad, does it? Well, it gets you in slow stages. Notice who has published this great book. The Doughnut Corporation of America. For a little background, The Doughnut Corporation of America, or DCA, was formed 1920 by Adolph Levitt, inventor of the automatic donut making machine. Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Sort of the thing you would be happy to lay under all day with your mouth open. Anyway, Mr. Levitt is also the father of the "donut chain", opening a store called "Mayflower" in 1931 and ulitmately having 18 stores nationwide. Which was a big deal at the time. The DCA is still around today, manufacturing specialized donut-making equipment to most commercial donut chains, including Dunkin' Donuts and Entenmanns.
So, you have to ask yourself, can the creator of such happiness and deliciousness make something evil? The answer is: Yes. This is a book of donut recipes. But not recipes to make donuts. Recipes on how to use donuts. Recipes that try to disguise donuts as real food. For example, check out the Crumbled Donuts above, where it claims that donuts have the same nutritional value as a bowl of cereal. And it is obvious that nutritional value is important to the creators of this book. Check out the three big fat sausages next to the donut french toast above.
But I do have one small disclaimer. Apparently, donuts made back in 1947 were a little different than the donuts we have today. They didn't have sickly sweet commercial frostings or fillings. They appear to be plain, dry cake donuts. So, some of these things might not be so horrible. But still...the Donut Rarebit above is still truly disgusting.
Donut Prune Salad. With cottage cheese in it. Do I even need to say it?
Thank god. At the end the book the recipes come back to sanity, giving us a picture of donuts that I am comfortable with.
Donut Prune Salad....uhhhhh...so gross....
posted by Ruth at 7:58 PM
9 Comments:
I think a cuisine made entirely of donuts is a great idea! I was just reflecting the other day how donuts are the perfect balance of sweet and fat and deliciousness.
"Doughnuts, is there anything they can't do?"
-Brian
This should referenced on "The Simpson's."
I have photographs of the doughnut corporation of America has sales conference in St Louis at The Statler hotel Ju19421 , 1944. My Uncle Ronald Morton worked for the company for many years and I am going through his history file and I came across much information on the doughnut corporation of America. I see the last post was 2006 but if you're out there come back at me at that email address that's attached and I will be happy to share what I have.
I just did some research and found my grandfather worked there around the time of your uncle. I would be curious to see the pics.
Would anyone like my collection of old cookbooks and marketing pamphlets. My mom collected and I can’t stand thought of throwing out
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hello! yes please, assuming the collection is related to the donuts. sorry about the deletions: too much excitement, not enough coffee.
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