---
title: 'Making Baked Pumpkin "Doughnuts" & Live Q&A'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=eXWYmTf93Ms'
video_id: 'eXWYmTf93Ms'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 3748
---

# Making Baked Pumpkin "Doughnuts" & Live Q&A

> Source: [Making Baked Pumpkin "Doughnuts" & Live Q&A](https://youtube.com/watch?v=eXWYmTf93Ms)

## Summary

Max Miller hosts a live Q&A session where he makes baked pumpkin donuts, sharing a modern recipe that's easy and perfect for fall. He also discusses the history of donuts, from their Dutch origins to the invention of the donut hole and the rise of Krispy Kreme.

### Key Points

- **Pumpkin Donut Ingredients and Mixing** [3:10] — The recipe uses vegetable oil, eggs, sugar, canned pumpkin, flour, and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. The batter is mixed until just combined to avoid a chewy texture.
- **Early Donut History** [7:26] — The first donuts were Dutch 'oliekoecken' (oil cakes) in New Amsterdam. The term 'doughnut' first appeared in Washington Irving's 1809 work.
- **The Donut Hole Origin** [16:45] — Captain Hanson Gregory claimed to have invented the donut hole in 1847 by cutting out the raw center of his mother's donuts.
- **The First Donut Machine** [34:25] — The first donut machine was invented by Adolph Levitt in the early 1920s, and by 1931 he was making $25 million a year.
- **Krispy Kreme Origins** [41:25] — Krispy Kreme was founded in 1937 in Winston-Salem, NC, by Vernon Rudolph and two friends, selling donuts from the back of a Pontiac.
- **Cream Cheese Frosting** [25:35] — The cream cheese frosting uses cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt. It's best piped onto cooled donuts.
- **Donuts at the 1931 World's Fair** [35:48] — Donuts were acclaimed as the 'food hit of the century of progress' at the 1931 World's Fair in Chicago.

## Transcript

good morning
or afternoon or evening wherever you
are i'm max miller this is tasting
history live
it's a q a where we're going to be
making uh a modern recipe
for baked pumpkin donuts which
technically
technically a lot of people would say
aren't even donuts
because they're just in the shape of a
donut so the reason that i'm i'm doing
this a modern recipe a lot of people are
like why are you doing a modern recipe
is because first of all can everyone
hear me
i just want to make sure that that i'm
able to be heard and not just screaming
into the abyss
um yes all right so the reason that
we're doing a modern recipe was i wanted
to do another q a
because uh you guys really liked it it
seemed and
i wanted to kind of cover some of the
recipes that i'm never going to be able
to do as a full episode
there just isn't maybe enough history or
there isn't
a good recipe that i've found um
and it might be something that i really
enjoy that i think
other people would enjoy but again just
isn't going to make for a good episode
and
my pumpkin donuts that i make every year
around this time
are are them so but we will be talking a
little bit about the history of donuts
um and i'll show you how to make this
modern version of well it's only modern
uh modern version of big pumpkin donuts
the nice thing is
it's really really easy it's something
that everybody likes
as long as you like pumpkin um so you
know
can't go wrong with that if you have
questions
put them into the comments i know a lot
of people have sent me things but put
them into the comments we'll get to them
as we go through jose is going to be
helping me a lot on that
um so yeah oh i actually had a question
for
you all so i think that because i was
going to say good morning tasting
history
fans we're tasting history viewers i
think we need a name
i think the group of people that watches
tasting history needs a name so
if you have ideas uh throw them out my
creativity
is stifled on that all right so the
first thing you need to do
is to preheat your oven which i've
already started preheating
so okay yesterday i did a live stream
i'm totally going off topic yesterday i
did a live stream with
john townsend from uh at the nutmeg
tavern
over on his channel townsends mind blown
it was such an amazing
experience he's like a hero of mine and
a really big influence in just why i got
into doing
uh to doing this and going on to youtube
so we were supposed to do it on friday
but they had technical difficulties
with their internet so we ended up
having to move it to saturday
so i've been thinking all right we're
not going to have any internet issues no
technical difficulties well this morning
our internet is working but our ac our
air conditioner went out which in a lot
of the world right now not a big deal
but in in southern california it's still
rather warm it's going to be in the
upper 80s i think today so
i'm now turning on the oven with no ac
so pray for me um all right let's go
through
the ingredients that you will need for
your pumpkin donuts
these are for the donut portion of the
donut
so we have one half cup or
100 grams of vegetable oil now
you can use other types of oil i use
vegetable oil because it doesn't really
impart any flavor
don't use something like peanut oil
don't use
um extra virgin olive oil it's going to
give a little bit too much flavor
but you can use any kind of flavorless
oil
um eggs three large eggs beaten
somewhat sugar just a little bit
just one half cups or 300 grams of sugar
it's actually a ton of sugar
but i like sugar pumpkin now pumpkin
usually comes in um
cans that the small can here in the us
at least is about 425 grams
we're not going to use that much but you
do want to use canned pumpkin
uh fresh pumpkin is wonderful for some
things
but it actually doesn't have as strong
flavor
typically as canned pumpkin which is odd
it's ready um i am going to be making
something very soon that will be on a
full episode of tasting history where
we'll be using
a full pumpkin but for this for time's
sake
uh we're going to use canned pumpkin
puree so we're going to use about 340
grams or one and a half cups
like i said that's not quite a full can
if you end up using a full can it's fine
not a big deal but maybe back off the
oil a little bit because
it will add a lot more liquid to it
flour uh two cups or 240 grams of flour
and then lots of spices now yesterday so
this
the first recipe that i ever did for um
baked pumpkin donuts came from king
arthur flower
amazing um but one thing that i
definitely always found myself changing
is the amount of spices because like
john townsend and i were talking about
yesterday
we like our spices so we i pretty much
doubled
if not more all the spices that were in
the first recipe that i used years ago
um this is this is quite a bit different
um from that one so
we have cinnamon i'm using one teaspoon
i would actually maybe even use a little
bit more but one teaspoon for this
nutmeg uh kudos to john
townsend with this nutmeg a half a
teaspoon
and a half a teaspoon of ground
ginger and then we need some salt
between one and one and a half teaspoons
of salt you can kind of
um kind of play with that and then about
a t
one and a half teaspoons of baking soda
uh sorry baking powder one and a half
teaspoons of baking powder also
all of this should be in the description
of the
of the video i have all the ingredients
all of the procedure
everything should be done there so don't
be writing it down don't worry about
that
um so the first thing we're going to do
then
like i said is a really easy recipe you
take
all of the ingredients except for the
flour and put them into a bowl
i'm using a stand mixer you don't have
to use a stand mixer you can use
whatever you want
but we just literally put everything in
the bowl
so while i'm doing this let's talk about
where donuts came from so
the first things kind of akin to a donut
actually i talk about in one of my
favorite episodes a recent episode that
i did on um it was called
fart support uh farts of portugal
portuguese farts
which was an elizabethan kind of
meatball but
i talk about other things including
another dish called portuguese farts or
none farts or petubitan which is parts
of a [ __ ]
uh which were essentially
early donut holes they were little round
balls of dough that were that were deep
fried and then
usually sugared and they puffed up so
they were a little bit like
um early balls of dough but our early
doughnuts
but the first donuts even though they
weren't called that were
actually called ilikes or oil cakes and
they came from
the dutch who were because as we all
know from there might be giants
even old new york was once new amsterdam
when the dutch
ran new amsterdam which is now manhattan
uh they had these
early cakes and they were essentially
they kind of looked at least in the
descriptions they went on pictures but
in the descriptions
they were big kind of round but
flattened on the top um
sweet puffed up fried dough so kind
kind of looking like a like a jelly
doughnut mic today
um and then one of the first
not the first because there actually is
a recipe for them
uh i don't have it but we know that it
exists
from 1800 but soon after in 1809
longfellow i'm gonna because i'm going
to quote him i need to look
uh i don't memorize everything um sorry
not long fellow washington irving who
did sleepy hollow and he lived in the
new york area
he wrote 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 hogs fat called
doughnuts or ella cakes
a delicious kind of cake at presents
scarcely known in the city
accepting in genuine dutch families
so that is the first time that they are
called donuts
which is pretty cool nut at the point in
time was
just referred to us a small kind of cake
so it had nothing to do with
nuts um all right so once everything
is in the bowl we just hook it on up
here
to our wonderful magical kitchen aid
stand mixer
and we just put the paddle on and then
we mix go on low otherwise things will
spill out as they just did
when i went straight to high um
do we have any questions
where did my love of history come from
is this too loud can we hear
it because otherwise we'll just have to
pause because it needs to do a work
it was about done where did my love of
history come from
and why and why what
where did the love of history come from
and how did you know you wanted to do
this type of channel
where did my love of history come from
and how did i know that i wanted to do
this type of channel my love of history
came from
i think it started actually with my
grandpa so my grandfather
was um was in world war ii
uh he was um um
like worked in the medical corps um
during world war ii
and he had all these great stories as a
kid of him being in
england and france and later germany
um that he would tell me and i would
just sit there and
marvel at these stories that were
from a world so foreign to me even
though you know it was only 40 years
before
50 years before i was a little kid it
was so foreign to me
but it was also sitting right in front
of me and that was where my love of
history came from because
i loved stories and that's all that
history is it's just stories um
and why i decided to do this channel
i wanted to share stories with people i
guess
i guess that's a good answer right um so
now that we now that everything is mixed
it doesn't take very long we're going to
put the flower in but just about a
third or even half at a time and you can
do this by hand
it's probably smarter to do it by hand
but
go slow you do not want to overwork the
flower
otherwise they're not going to be good
so you want to um
you want to mix it in you know what
actually i am going to do it by hand you
want to mix it in until it is
just just done
just mixed in otherwise they get all
chewy
and nobody likes a chewy doughnut
uh so
yeah i had we have a
historian's unite thank you daniel
fritsch
fritch i like that um i appreciate that
appreciate the super chat oh i wanted to
bring up a lot of people have been
asking
um when i'm going to have merchandise
and the answer hopefully is on tuesday's
video
uh that's that looks to be one i
actually had hoped it would be ready for
today but it looks like it'll be ready
on tuesday so we'll actually have a
merch store up at first it's going to be
very limited just stuff with the tasting
history logo but i've got some really
cool things um garum themed and
and butter themed and stuff coming right
behind it uh
in the next few weeks so definitely keep
an eye out
for the merch um also i want to thank
my patrons from patreon um
they've been so supportive and it does
provide
you know kind of a bit of a stable
income to make the videos so i know how
much i can spend on
ingredients and tools and things like
that
because as as john in towns and
john townsend was saying yesterday
youtube is not
predictable um you know so uh really
appreciate the patrons
out there my patrons um yeah
so now that we have our like i said it
doesn't take very much
i don't know if you can see this it's a
gorgeous orange color
um you pretty much just need to kind of
get rid of the lumps and if there are a
few lumps that's all right
but what you want to make sure is that
it's all off of the bottom
all the i'm talking about the flour you
don't want the flour there on the bottom
i did leave a fair amount of baking
powder behind
it's probably about a sixteenth it
actually
i don't think it's it's it's not as much
as it looks like actually it's because
of these wooden things
it's probably here i'll get all of it
out
and it's just enough to go onto my under
the tip of my finger
that's it we'll toss it in um
it's not it doesn't really matter
uh as long as you you get to the to the
crux of it the thing with baking powder
is
the older it gets the less potent it is
so
if if your baking powder is old you
should either
use a little bit more or go get new
baking powder you really should like
refresh your baking powder every six to
nine months
uh once you open it all right so then
hillary asked you never showed your
samba con video how did that taste
my sambuca video so i get this a lot is
when i made the [ __ ] cod i didn't taste
it on camera and i was talking about
this uh yesterday in the live stream
on townsends when uh you
when i first started the channel i
called it tasting history
and yet i did not taste the food on
camera so i'm a little slow on the
uptake but people commented and said
why aren't you tasting your food on
camera and that made
it so starting around i think the fourth
or fifth video i started tasting the
food on camera which was
which was really nice um so
it tasted wonderful even even jose liked
it and that's saying something because
uh it does not like a lot of things that
i make
um at least the historical things um
thank you
kevin i'm not going to
try to i am going to try to say your
last name
chuck chukowski uh
mike was asking i don't know but thank
you very much for the super chat i
appreciate it
um so yeah sembok wonderful
make it um especially it's nice and
light it doesn't taste anything like a
modern-day cheesecake it's delicious
though
um but yeah so my early videos i'm not
tasting
on camera which annoyed a lot of people
but i i changed my ways so now at this
point
you're going to need to uh you can
either spray down
some donut pans um or or
butter them i i butter them and then put
some flour in there and then i put them
in the freezer for about 10 minutes
just to kind of firm up the butter um
you need to get
the batter into the pans the best way to
do this
is by piping it in but
i'm slow with piping and so we're trying
to kind of move things along since i'm
baking an entire thing on camera today
so
i'm going to be a little bit messy and
just spoon it into
the uh into the pan
so you want to get it almost up to the
top and then kind of level it off
in the meantime
we have to wonder how donuts got their
holes
so the story goes uh that
a ship captain named hanson gregory
uh in 1847 claimed that his
mother used to make his uh crew
donuts but remember they didn't have
holes at the time
well the way the way that she would make
them i was kind of mean because he's
saying bad things about his mom's
cooking but the way that she would make
them
they weren't quite cooked in the middle
and um
and he didn't like the raw dough so he
would
take the top to a tin pepper
can like a little tin pepper holder and
cut out the center
of the donut and 50 years later when
giving an interview
he tells the story and he is quoted as
saying and who knows what he actually
sounded like but seeing as he's a
ship captain from um from new england
i think he sounded a bit like this he
said
the first donut hole ever seen by mortal
eyes
were those on his ship um
again probably didn't sound like that
but in my head he did
so like i said this is taking
this this is actually going a lot faster
than when i pipe them because
i'm really slow at piping uh it's
actually getting the stuff in the bag
that i'm slow at and i tend to make even
a bigger mess than i am right now but
it is what it is i'm not a professional
cook i bet a
pastry chef could just pop these out
like nobody's dennis
um but i'm not a pastry chef andrew
benson says
he loved the stream yesterday and he's
very excited to support her
thank you andrew benson and then liz
watched your
stream yesterday on town stands and said
why didn't you say black rat
wow black rat
okay so the black rat i i was shocked at
how many
comments and things that i got
about the black rat so this was on the
episode um
the uh indian episode where i cooked
from the manuscript
and he mentions black rat for a king
and people just went crazy wanting me to
make this black rat i'm not ever making
the black rat
but i should have mentioned that
yesterday on the channel it totally uh
totally slipped my mind because it's
gross
right i don't know but i guess it would
have been perfect to mention when i was
talking about things that i'm just never
going to make
um i thought yesterday was was really
interesting he has
he has a wonderful take on things you
know his channel
is is so
specific it's 18th century not all but
pretty much
all american um i actually got one of
his
books where he cooked from a spanish
cookbook which was pretty cool
um i think it was spanish new world but
uh
you know it's it was just so much fun to
chat with him and i hope
i hope that i get to to do it again
hopefully in person when all of this
craziness
is over um this is exciting tv everyone
watching me
spoon batter into donut molds
i feel like one of those old pbs
telethons where they weren't that
exciting you know with lawrence welk
but there it is says you're amazing
thank you stan brown 32 you know what we
had some questions actually that popped
up
uh that people had sent earlier on so
i'm going to scroll down
and talk about them evan switch
sweet switch uh said did i major in
history in college
or did i study baking which came first
so i did
study history in college but i was not a
history major though i did take
i actually took more history classes
than a history major
would have needed but my major and my
degree is in
uh classical voice so completely
different
but uh i loved history so much i just
kept taking history classes mainly
british history classes
uh we had some really nice nice teachers
there at
arizona state um my love of banking
didn't come until about
five years ago this is why it's taking
me so long to do things and
and why i'm just so messy uh because i'm
not trained as a baker
everything i learned from baking i
learned from the great british bake off
um by the way i'm gonna wet my finger
like if you get stuff
in the in the holes and stuff just kind
of slide it off so the
so the uh shape is correct um
yeah i learned everything from the great
british bake off about five years ago i
just started devouring that show
and i loved it and
never went back um so i'm self-taught
i guess you know watching
crew and and paul and mary berry mainly
mary barry
um that's not really self-taught i was
taught by mary barry
uh quite the credentials um
let's see poultive asks which recipe
would you absolutely love to make but
can't
find equivalent ingredients for
um that's a good question
i it's not even that i can't find the
ingredients
so i don't want to find the ingredients
so i mean anything with silphium from
ancient rome i would love to make those
things
so i can't find silphium because it's
extinct but i'm still going to make them
i'm just going to use
um you know historians have come up with
a couple different kind of
things that would have been used instead
of sophia even when back then when
sophie went extinct because it went
extinct
back then 2000 years ago almost um
we're going to put these into the oven
we're going to put them into the oven
for
it really kind of depends my oven is you
know not great did i say to preheat the
oven to 350
fahrenheit that's 175 celsius yes so
we're going to put them in for about 15
minutes and then we're going to start
looking at them
at about 15 minutes take a skewer once
the skewer comes out they're done
sometimes they take a little bit longer
maybe up to like 18 minutes
but let's do this what are your plans
for viking
my plans for viking recipes so
uh i have a few plans actually one i
just got a fantastic
book from a viewer sent it to me um
called a viking meal
oh man last meal
i can't remember the name of the book
now but it's basically
uh several culinary historians kind of
updated what they thought would be
viking recipes because
the vikings did not leave any recipes
so it's a lot of guesswork um but we
know
a lot of what they ate we know a lot of
what they were growing
um so we can extrapolate kind of
and we do know later recipes from from
the same
cultures uh where the vikings mostly
came from
so one of my plans is actually mead
which is going to be coming up very soon
uh though i'm gonna probably more equate
it with anglo-saxon but talk about you
know the anglo-saxons and the vikings
kind of dealing with mead again
it's the recipe comes from i believe the
1200s so
it's a bit later than the vikings were
around but another thing with viking
food
i need to set a timer
can you set a timer for 15 minutes um
i do not think that through um so uh
before we move to to vikings there are a
few things you can do with these donuts
you could put cinnamon and sugar on top
black delicious
but if you're like me and you're like
jose we want some
cream cheese frosting on our pumpkin
donuts so i'm going to make cream cheese
frosting and show you how to do that
um oh but no going back to the vikings
so the vikings were not
as monolithic and we're learning even
more now recently
as monolithic as we usually think of yes
from scandinavia at first but they
spread out they were down in sicily they
were in the byzantine empire down where
turkey is now they were the varangian
guard who took care of the
uh guarded the the byzantine emperor
they were
in russia they were dorouse uh who who
invaded russia so
the foods were incredibly varied
obviously what they were eating
in norway was not the same as what they
were eating in turkey
that said usually when we think of
viking food we think norway sweden
denmark
the orkneys iceland so that's probably
what i'll focus on
okay so for the icing which is delicious
uh you need one block or eight ounces uh
or
224 grams of softened cream cheese
softened is important one stick of
butter
and that is a half cup or 115 grams
a ton of powdered sugar about three cups
and really this is where you kind of can
play on
how thick you want your icing to be it
could be three cups it could be
two cups it would just be more liquidy
um if you want to like do a drizzle go
with two cups
you need just a large pinch of salt
that's a large pinch like you know maybe
three fingers worth
and then not necessary but if you'd like
just some vanilla
i use one teaspoon um it keeps the icing
white much more than that it starts to
really get a yellow color
um but that's all right if you like
vanilla go with the yellow
uh so for this we just
put in the cream cheese
and zabata and we're going to use
a hand mixer um
says this channel is so comfy and
pumpkin donuts on a fall sunday
thank you can you can you all hear jose
i'm not sure if he's
being picked up because he's he's he's
saying some of the questions and uh some
of the super chats
um and i want to make sure that uh that
you're you're getting heard
um yes we hear him fantastic okay
so trying not to spill my water we are
going to
mix our our stuff
um but before we do that
we're going to do a little bit more
history so
donuts were still a fairly new england
thing
until world war one when female
volunteers
a lot of them from the salvation army um
started
bringing or making donuts rather i don't
think they were bringing them over but
they were making donuts
for the our boys in the trenches over in
france
it was a way to kind of remind him of
home as long as home was new england
uh but that's like is where the
salvation army at the point was uh was
based mostly so
they were they were giving out donuts to
um the boys in the trenches and
sometimes they were actually
going up to the front lines it wasn't
like oh when you're on
pillow you know going going to the back
of the lines you would have a doughnut
no they were going to the trenches these
women bringing donuts which i think is
pretty cool
a lot of people think that that's
actually where um
where they got the term doughboys which
is what we called our foot soldiers
during world war one
that is incorrect uh they were actually
called the boys during the civil war
by the calvar the cavalrymen calvary
cavalrymen
um who kind of used it as a bit of a
knock
um why we called they'd call them
doughboys
not entirely sure but it possibly had to
do with their buttons
uh they were like kind of large buttons
that looked a little bit like lumps of
dough
or supposedly they would use white flour
to polish their white
belts i don't really see how that would
work
but who knows maybe i'll polish a white
belt and see guess who is it
hungarian desserts there's a lot of
history there hungarian desserts
i have a few ideas send me some zilla
says are you going to do any video on
pre-ownable dishes
creole dishes so i want to cover creole
dishes but i want to
go i want that to be a tasting history
on the road
yeah and gracie has a suggestion that
for native american cuisine you get in
contact with
sean sherman who wrote the sous chefs
indigenous kitchen
thank you yes i do want to do native
american cuisine i would love it if you
would actually
email me that at tastinghistory with max
miller
gmail.com longest email name
ever um i would really appreciate that
because i do want to do some native
american
cuisine we're going to add our uh
vanilla we're going to add our
salts and we're going to mix those in
um so somebody had mentioned
that you know doing a fall dessert
on a lovely fall morning though does not
feel like fall here in southern
california
but fall and early winter like my
favorite cooking and baking times
of the year so we're going to slowly put
this in and slowly beat it otherwise it
will go everywhere
um and also don't put it all in at once
because then you'll be able to gauge
exactly how thick you want it
um so maybe like a cup at a time anyway
so
since it's fall and different holidays
are coming up halloween
all souls day thanksgiving uh at least
here in the us
and of course christmas and hanukkah um
for the next couple months i'm gonna be
really focusing not entirely but really
focusing on
holiday traditions holiday foods because
there are just so many
and the histories behind them are
fantastic and i really
i really relate with them um so you know
i don't want to give too much away but
somebody had actually asked somebody
who was it who was it uh chris
whilst eric uh had asked if i was going
to be doing some holiday
episodes and he had mentioned something
for uh
sawin or halloween well i'm doing
something for solomon halloween
i'm going to be doing soul cakes um
medieval plum pudding for christmas so
interesting thing about plum pudding is
it
it really didn't start to become
associated with christmas
until a christmas carol when
miss cratchit made her plum pudding uh
for christmas day
and a couple years later um
eliza acton put out her cookbook modern
cookery for private families
and she was the one who said
i'm going to capitalize on mr dickens
work and call
this christmas pudding she actually had
several recipes in it
for christmas pudding it was just
basically different versions of plum
pudding
um so yeah i'm gonna be doing that um
and what's really really cool is
i had a viewer send me an early edition
of eliza atkins modern cookery it's the
first early cookbook that i've ever
owned
i think it's a second or third edition
from 1851
um and it just can i tell you i don't
know if you all feel this way about
books but i love
books in general but one of my favorite
things about books
is how they smell you go into a library
or a bookstore
they have bookstores spilled um but the
smell of books
and this book smells so good it smells
like
i don't know it smells like history in
england it's just it's it's fantastic
and you can actually see like the
fingerprints on the pages of
150 years of people using this book it's
amazing yes jose professor
love and the occasional pun thank you
john russell asked about your classic
voice if you could sing something
quickly
i did sing something quickly oh it's so
early
um i so mostly now what i sing i ended
up going into musical theater actually
but
now mostly what i sing is early music so
um
renaissance medieval music i mean is it
really a surprise
but uh maybe maybe i'll sing for you
maybe i won't we'll see um uh said that
the person that invented the donut is
buried near their house
a captain looks like and thank you for
making history cooking
person who invented the donut a captain
he says
buried near his house so i'm guessing it
was the person who made that hole
uh in the donut um so that's very cool
uh are you in new england i wonder i'm
assuming anthony says we need recipes
from medieval
eastern europe medieval eastern european
recipes
they might be coming up uh it also
depends on how far east
you're talking like are you talking
poland are you talking like byzantium
either way things are coming um so
interesting story
donuts really so after world war one
when the when the doughboys were coming
back to america
they wanted these donuts that they had
that they had been eating in the
trenches
and uh in new york there was actually a
russian immigrant
named adolf levitt who invented in
the early 20s a donut
machine so he could pump donuts out a
lot faster
because he would actually he was uh in
broadway on broadway
was his store and so as theater patrons
would come out
during the intermission he would sell
them a bunch of donuts so you need to
make them on the fly so
the first donut machine uh was made in
the 1920s by 1931
he was making 25 million dollars a year
in 1931. that's an unbelievable amount
of money
especially making donuts because he was
shipping them all over
the country and i guess probably selling
his patent for
um or licensing his patent for this
donut machine
so in 1931 31 the new yorker gave him a
write-up
i love this we can tell you a little
about the donut making
the donut making place in broadway
donuts float
dreamily through a grease canal in a
glass enclosed machine
walk dreamily up a moving ramp and
tumble
dreamily into an outgoing basket
interesting and i'm guessing this was
written before there were any synonyms
for dreamily
three times in one sentence that seems a
little overkill
that same year 1931 at the world's fair
in chicago
donuts were acclaimed as the food hit
of the century of progress and i would
have to agree
they are the food hit of the century of
progress
so now we have our
our icing honestly this is probably
enough for like two batches of donuts
but
who's going to just use a half you know
it's like because it's a whole thing of
cream cheese and a whole thing of butter
it's just easy enough and it stays for a
while so you can
either put it on other things that
you're making wonderful on gingerbread
or whatever
or just put it into the refrigerator and
every few hours
go take a taste gender overcast has a
tip
place your prepared piping bag into a
drinking glass and roll the extra over
the cupboard so you have internal edge
to scrape your filling into
that is a very good idea i am going to
try that my
thing is i need a piping bag colder but
actually maybe like a large cup would
work because what i end up doing is
once i've got the stuff in the piping
bag i set the piping bag down and it
just like
oozes out there i know that there are
ways to get that to stop
happening i just don't know what they
are sam brown32 asks
your plans for a cookbook maybe a
kickstarter
plans for a cookbook maybe a kickstarter
i do have plans for a cookbook i'm not
there yet because
the the show is just taking up all my
time but it's it's a definite must
um it's kind of how i want it to
to work because i don't want it to just
be recipes i want it
to also have the wonderful anecdotes of
history
uh that i obviously love so much so
kind of figuring out how to make that
work if you have any suggestions
i'm i'm fair game dan's asking have you
ever heard of cooking with
k-u-c-h-e-n and we give
um yes i i i don't know exactly
if if you have a more specific like if
you have a recipe or
or a link to a description uh send it my
way and it will make it on the list
i so the list of dishes that i have
has grown exponentially that said
do keep sending me recommendations
because
several upcoming episodes are based on
your recommendations
um because sometimes i'll read something
and it's just like
yes the history is perfect or the timing
is perfect or i've always wanted to make
this so
keep sending them my way you can send
them on twitter or instagram
but the best is via email tastinghistory
with maxmiller
gmail.com how long do we have on the
donuts
right 35 seconds all right 35 seconds
jackpot summer is coming in
somebody needs to call me
so that's middle english i cannot
remember all the words except for
somebody name that's about it so
when it's time to take out the donuts
or when it's time to start checking on
them it's nice to have a wooden skewer
as soon as it comes out clean you poke
it in the donut take it out clean it's
just like any other cake
it comes out clean they're ready let's
take a look
well that is clean as clean can be so
there it goes let's take it out
like i said if they're not ready don't
take them out
um but mine are ready
uh lyraelia wants to thank you for
history
for your lessons because they are
infectious
can i get some love too thank you
and nice for hosting as well uh so take
them out
put them on first of all turn off your
oven especially if your ac
is out because it's freaking hot um take
them out put them on
the the top of the oven or or on an oven
rack for about five minutes
and then we're going to turn them out
turning them out before that they will
definitely stick
they might stick even if not um usually
there's always one
one sucker uh who refuses to come out
of the of the donut pen
i don't know what i did with the uh
cooling racks
i had them are they over there he took
my cooling racks
can't work in these conditions um
a little more history though it's not
really history it's just kind of a fun
little
fun little tidbit about donuts so uh
in the 1934 movie this is just after you
know the the ride up about the dreamily
floating donuts um there was a movie
called it happened one night if you've
never seen it
you must see it it's absolutely charming
it's with clark cable
and claudette colbert and in it clark
gable
uh teaches claudette colbert's character
how to dunk
a donut and it's important because it's
the first time that we really see it
like
in a hollywood movie or in you know it's
starting to
to make its way into the zeitgeist of
american culture
um so this is what he says in the movie
duncan's in art don't let it soak so
long and dip and plop into your mouth
if you let it soak too long it'll get
soft and fall off
right uh all it's all a matter of timing
i ought to write a book about it let's
love that love clark
love clark gable um and then
in 1937 vernon rudolph and two of his
friends in winston
winston-salem uh north carolina with 25
in their pockets between the three of
them uh got a bunch
of potatoes and eggs and milk
and sugar and made donuts
potatoes in their donuts interesting
and what they ended up doing was selling
them out of the back of their 1936
pontiac and what they called them were
crispy cream
donuts and so that is the beginning of
krispy kreme donuts
what's funny is that they were doing
this in july
in north carolina and so it was really
really hot and so
while they were baking they took off
pretty much all their clothes down to
their skivvies uh to bake the donuts
so i'm guessing those i'm guessing one
they didn't tell the people they were
selling them that
uh to that but also probably
probably wouldn't pass the uh food and
drug administration guidelines today
but it's fun it's 1937 there are no
rules
um max barely wants you to
fight his dad knife fight your dad
no i wouldn't knife fight anyone first
of all i'd lose
second of all i don't want to hurt my
face get cut and third of all
my knife skills not great not great in
the kitchen i'm going to guess
not not great fighting either um
yes the cookbook uh michael abelman's
field of plenty michael abelman's field
of plenty
i do not know it i will have to look
into it uh i'll add that onto my
amazon list of books that i need which
people have been sending me
um and it's just it's just awesome um
i had a few other questions from others
sarah asked
do i have a cookbook i already talked
about that one allison harvey seeing as
we are both
british baking show fans is there a bake
they showcase that you would have
wanted to dive deeper into there is
there was an episode where they did a
victorian tennis cake
and they talked about the cake which was
really cool they didn't really talk
about the history of it
and it's a really weird take it looks
like a tennis court and i want to know
more about
why it exists um and i i haven't done
any research on it but
i will one of these days did you have
something uh yeah uh
about ramsay 79 census love thank you
renzi 79
and stan brown's is happy excited that
happened one night
it happened one night it's just a
charming week i grew up
uh i spent a lot of time over at my
nana's and she always had turner classic
movies on because she had cable we
didn't have cable
uh but she had cable she splurged and
always had turner classic movies on
or she had tons and tons of vhs's that
she had
recorded off the tv so i watched a lot
of movies with commercials growing up
um and tv versions uh but
we would so old movies like that from
the 30s and 40s and 50s i just love all
my favorite
not all of them but most of my favorite
movies are things like all about eve and
casablanca and
bringing up baby and stuff so the chat
wants to know about your history
my history research process
i really wish that it was
that it was so easily defined uh it's
kind of different for every for every
episode
typically lately lately i've been
uh i've been starting with the research
more than than the dish um not always
sometimes the dish comes first but a lot
of times i've been finding a story
because i've been researching other
things for other episodes i'll come
across a story that i'm like oh i need
to dive deeper into that
and then as i dive deeper into that i
find something
that's like oh there is a food that
would be perfect for this and so i find
a recipe or whatever
um so that's always the start but my the
favorite the best part of
any book uh history book is
not what's in the book it's actually
what's in the back of the book it's
bibliography
because that is where they cite their
sources and where they cite their
primary sources and
i love primary sources so that's kind of
where i
where i start is when i get a history
book i go to the back
and i start going through the
bibliography and try to find those
sources
it also gives a little credence because
you know if you're just doing all of
your research
online and blogs and stuff and there's a
lot of great stuff online
um like it's you know the most valuable
tool
but there's also a lot of misinformation
online so you you really need to find
those published works that
hopefully they did a little more due
diligence doing yes
gina and jb but also people don't see
the pokemon
they can't see it this is because i'm in
it away so okay
oh it's also the pumpkin i got a pumpkin
um
but my big ass have been standing away
the whole time so we were actually
thinking about putting because there is
a pumpkin pokemon but we don't have it
um but we did have this little guy i
don't know how well you can see him
he'll shield the light here he's so cute
so there's that one he's it's pikachu
playing in leaves
and then we also have over here it's a
little early i guess but
he has pumpkin pie and his pikachu
sleeping in a cornucopia you guys
you guys it's just too cute look at his
little face
can you see it ah anyway um
we don't want to put the the plushies up
here because i've
like got oil and eggs and stuff and make
a big old mess
um so the frosting okay
so it's actually about time let me take
these and turn them out
and very likely be really embarrassed on
the internet
as they stick but let's see if they
don't so
all right can you even see this i don't
know maybe it's off camera it might be
the best thing oh no oh there's one i
got one
you gotta give them a little you gotta
give them a little tap you know
they're actually doing all right they
look good
if i had piped these in it would
actually work even better
um because
they're a little bit more perfect when
you pipe them in
um but let me show these to you so
like i said sometimes the hole gets uh
gets covered up so you gotta
make that all nice and clean
but here we have our our donuts
and they're absolutely they're just
wonderful now if you want to ice them
which we do you can't ice them until
they're fully cooled so we're going to
give them a few minutes
and then honestly i'm probably not going
to
uh ice them when you probably should
because they're just not going to have
time to cool we'd be here for
for too long so when i put the icing on
it'll probably just slip off but it's
still going to be delicious
i do suggest piping on the icing
um it just for prettiness sake you know
um
you can feel them coming out there's
always one see there's always one
it doesn't want to come out
but there we go 12 lovely donuts and
so there's a bit more in there i could
probably have made like two more donuts
so there's always a little bit extra
left baker's dozen as they say that
be one more doughnut 13. um so we'll
give this a moment
another cool thing if you want to go
really fancy
is some little pecan or walnut
um chips just topped on
um it can overwhelm the flavor so
be really really light on them actually
in the picture that you'll see
like the picture that i posted there
were too many
uh it looked nice but but they overwhelm
the flavor
especially if you're using pecan uh it's
a little bit of stronger
taste so use sparingly
um did we have any more questions uh
talk about the
song i wanna do the swan i wanna do so
the other day i was doing an interview
very fortunate to get to do that um
and they asked me something that i would
love to do but
like that's you know it'll be like
season finale and
it is a roast swan um
in the middle ages and i think more so
during the renaissance
you see these pictures of an entire
roast swan
with its feathers and i want to do that
i want to figure out how to do that
it probably would look terrible it would
look like you know when i do
but i really want to do it someday but
one i i kind of
hurts me i wouldn't kill the swan but
even to buy a dead swan
um because they're so beautiful they're
ill-tempered so i
maybe maybe i could just remember swans
and geese are not nice birds
um so that might that might work but
also i would need to get a much much
bigger oven
you really need like a hearth you know
to have this entire
swan being roasted um so i
bet though there is i think he's called
the tudor kitchen
there's a guy in england
his last name is fish look him up
google twitter kitchen fish he does some
of the most fantastic
recreations of tudor style dishes
because he actually has
a tutor style like mammoth kitchen or
access to one including a giant hearth
and so he will make these things
and i would love to when i'm able to
travel again
go over there and work with him and see
you know maybe we could maybe we could
make a swan and he could show me how to
to re-feather a bird two things we're
putting it in the fridge help it cool
faster
wood putting it in the fridge helping
quickly taking it off the oven will
definitely
go faster so there is that but
you know you don't want to you don't
want it to cool too fast
yeah it would cool faster in the in the
fridge
i've done that before and it always
tends to make it a little
um chewy i haven't done it with the
pumpkins but i've dealt with
uh with like cakes and stuff
you got to kind of wait for it to cool
on its own and then chill it
uh then then you know especially if
you're doing a cake and you need to
slice it
chill the cake and then and then the
crumbs won't won't matter but
maybe there's a way to do it i don't
know here's a good question any
misconceptions about
his historical cooking that burke you
like in the middle ages they all need
porridge and students
to play doctors his historical
historical little tidbits that that hurt
me first of all there's a guy named the
um the fake history hunter on twitter
who if you're not following go follow
him
he's amazing he literally just goes
through twitter and finds
fake history facts uh one thing that
bugs me and it's this this one's not
food related but
it's um the plague doctors
you see the pictures of the plague
doctors with the beak
uh that they would fill with um with
herbs and and other things
and those existed but not in the middle
ages those
didn't come around until i believe the
late 15 or even early 1600s so
when the plague really came back rampant
um during the time of uh like samuel
peeps in
in england in the 18th 50s
60s or sorry 16 50s and 60s
that's when that's when those plague
doctors were around they weren't around
at the
during the first the black death you
know um
it just just didn't happen uh another
thing
that always kind of irks me is
about and the thing is it's it's it
doesn't always
ring true for everywhere but some people
will say
um you know salt was very expensive some
it was very expensive for some people
and it wasn't very expensive
for other people it really depended on
where you lived because
just like gas prices today but to the
nth degree
getting a commodity to a certain place
was the most expensive part of
of its setting its price so if you live
really really far away from a salt mine
or from the ocean
you know it's going to be more expensive
what about sugar
sugar oh that's the big one that's the
big one
he yeah so i get a lot of comments
people saying they don't have sugar in
medieval times sugar is a new world food
sugar is an old world food well first of
all sugar can mean a lot of things honey
is sugar you know
but sugar cane is an old world food i
don't want to give too much information
about it because i am doing not one but
two episodes coming up on sugar because
the history
is fantastic dark
complex and wonderful but sugar cane is
an old world food
and it actually didn't come over to the
new world
until christopher columbus brought it
over to grow
in uh in hispaniola so it was extremely
expensive though
for pretty much everyone um from
india and china the less expensive but
unbelievably expensive in the middle
east
and astronomically expensive in
places like england and germany and and
italy
so they did use it though but only
they're very wealthy everyone else just
used honey
and that's fine
anymore people want to know what you're
making fails
my baking fails and how much do i want
to share here
um so i think my my biggest two baking
sales have been
back to back it was heartbreaking
and i've had a lot of big a lot of
things end up in that trash can i
promise you but two of my biggest baking
fails were actually
a um a rose apple pie
where instead of using rose this is when
i first started baking i did not know
the difference between rose water and
rose oil and if anyone knows the
difference
it's like one cup of rose water equals
one drop of rose oil so
it called for two tables two tablespoons
of rose water and i thought this
is astronomically expensive this is like
a forty dollar
ingredient no it should have been like
three dollars worth of uh
rose water if that but i use rose oil
and the whole house just smelled
like potpourri for days it was a lot
um and then like the next week i made a
blueberry
pie and the blueberries uh the the top i
spent
hours making the crust and designing it
like blueberry vines it was gorgeous it
looked so good
i cooked it and it came out smelled
fantastic
but the top hadn't really gotten enough
color so i was like how do we color this
a little bit more
and i thought i'll put the broiler on it
that was my fault
i wasn't gonna rat him out but yes jose
suggested the brother
well it would have worked if i had known
how long to do it but it turns out like
what it was a couple minutes like two
minutes like
yeah like a minute or two under the
broiler
and the apartment was just filled with
smoke that that pie was done
it was it was rough it spent hours on it
i still lose sleep over that one um
let's feel these
feel these donuts they're actually
pretty cool on top
and that's all that we need for our
icing
so let's take like i said it's best to
pipe these but i'm not going to
i'm going to because because you're
there i'm going to just do it right in
front of you
on camera and take some of this sweet
sweet nectar and just
kind of spread it on top
um like i said they're probably pastry
chefs if there are any pastry chefs
watching this i'm sorry
i'm sorry you're having to watch this um
because it's probably you know things
that irk you
because that's not pretty it doesn't
matter because i'm gonna eat it right
away
uh and then we take some nuts
very few nuts and we put a couple
on more than a couple but really
just a few getting the light off just a
few nuts
any more than that and um it's going to
overpower it
but here we go tasting one of my
favorite things
baked pumpkin donuts
it's so autumnal y'all
i wonder why i'm putting on weight
they're so good they're just so good
they're not fried donuts the texture is
more like cake but
it's really light and tender cake
because of the oil
um yeah they're wonderful
you should make them they're really easy
i did it during a live stream and it's
only been an hour
you could probably do it even faster so
i suggest
you do just that so we're about out of
time but were there any more questions
that we need to get to
people still want to hear your song want
to hear me sing one more thing
um happy birthday sing happy birthday
it's not like
uh there's a wonderful song that again
i'm terrible with lyrics i forget them
all the time but there's a really great
song i remember
kind of a renaissance madrigal about um
robin hood
see i can't remember the lyrics darn it
but early one more on while the sun was
arising i saw a fair maid in the valley
below
oh don't deceive me oh never leave me
how could you use a war maiden so
really curious what what they did to
this poor meeting maiden to make her
opine how was she used
i don't know the cool thing about like
renaissance madrigals because you think
of them oh they're so sweet you know
all magical they're all about sex every
last one of them
uh they would use words and kind of
nonsense words
to imply certain actions they were
always about like
shepherds and the milk made and stuff
like that and then
they would say things like
you know look load lolly or or something
like that and load a lolly
man you know no um
but yeah there it is let's bring over
jamie before we say goodbye
musical episode of a million followers
subscribers yes
um a reminder too
if you want merch it's to start this
tuesday it's going to roll out over the
next few weeks
it's going to get more complex i'm
really excited um
about it and those are the big things
let me grab jamie because he's just so
freaking cute
seriously doesn't like to be on camera
but just little porn in
oh he's just so sweet oh he's just so
sweet
he is one of the most
he's just an awesome cat he uh always
wants to be in the thick of it that's
why we have to actually put him upstairs
during all this because he would be
up here he wouldn't be up here but he
would be at my feet i'd be tripping over
him because he just wants to be
everywhere um all right
thank you all so much it's been an hour
i'm gonna let you go
have your day go make pumpkin donuts
share those pictures with me
on instagram and twitter uh instagram is
tastinghistory with max miller twitter
is tastinghistory1 i love to see them
it's actually my favorite part of this
seeing you guys uh making the dishes so
thank you again have a wonderful rest of
your september and i will see you
in october with a lot of wonderful
holiday episodes coming up
bye