Is the Apple Cider Doughnut an Old New England Tradition?

The 1951 launch

Amy Traverso, senior food editor at Yankee magazine, traced the cider doughnut to midtown Manhattan. In 1951, she writes, The New York Times reported that the Doughnut Corporation of America was introducing a Sweet Cider Doughnut, described as "a spicy round cake" expected to have natural fall appeal.

Doughnuts and a cup of cider were already a seasonal pairing, especially at Halloween. The company's idea was to put the cider into the batter. Traverso allows that some home cook probably did it first, but the launch is the first record she found, and the publicity went to the company.

Why a doughnut company, and why farm stands

The Doughnut Corporation of America grew out of one baker's machine. Adolph Levitt got his automatic doughnut machine working in 1921 and set it in the window of his bakery in Harlem, where it dropped rings of batter into hot oil and flipped them on time, his granddaughter told NPR. Since a machine lasted for years, Levitt built his business on the mixes that went in them too, and that business became the Doughnut Corporation of America.

The food historian Michael Krondl links the cider doughnut's rise to that machine and to the car. As more families took Sunday drives, farm stands near cities fed them, and a doughnut machine with a bag of mix was an easy way to sell something hot next to the cider the orchard was already pressing. In Krondl's telling, the rural, old-timey feel came after.

What is genuinely old

The parts are old even if the doughnut is not. Hard cider was one of early America's main drinks in apple country, Krondl told NPR, and in 1809 Washington Irving described Dutch families in old New York frying balls of dough called doughnuts or olykoeks. The apples were immigrants too: domesticated apples come from Central Asia, as our apple pie hub traces.

Some writers go further. A 2022 Tasting Table article says cider doughnuts began with colonial cooks using butchering-season fat and cites a 1901 Buffalo newspaper clipping about Halloween parties. We could not see that clipping or find a colonial recipe, and since doughnuts served with cider were already a Halloween custom, a party mention may describe the pairing rather than cider in the batter. Until a dated recipe turns up, the safe claim is that the cider doughnut has been a fall classic since at least 1951.

The orchard doughnut today

Today the cider doughnut is a fall fixture at New England orchards and cider mills. Traverso singles out Vermont's Cold Hollow Cider Mill and Massachusetts's Red Apple Farm, each frying thousands a day in peak season. In 2026 a bill written with Nashua fourth graders, HB 1390, would have made it New Hampshire's official doughnut; a House committee voted 14 to 1 against it, and the House killed it on March 11.

Our apple cider doughnuts follow America's Test Kitchen, which skips boiling cider down and stirs in thawed apple juice concentrate for a stronger apple taste, with buttermilk for lift. They fry about 2 minutes at 350°F and get tossed in cinnamon sugar while warm. For no frying at all, our baked weeknight doughnuts live in the doughnuts hub.

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