Credit ancient Rome for giving us roads, the twelve-month calendar, aqueducts…and beignets. As early as the second century BC, street vendors were serving up the sugar-coated fritter’s precursor in “scriblita,” a simple dough fried in animal fat and drizzled in honey. Today, derivatives of that snack abound around the world, inextricably tied to Shrove, or Fat, Tuesday.
The day before Lent has long been marked as a day of indulgence, not to mention a chance to use up those rich ingredients in the cupboard, before weeks of fasting. In England, Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Day, and the bell that summons parishioners to confession is called the Pancake Bell; a recipe for that pastry first appears in a 1439 cookbook. In Germany there are fastnachts, a potato-based bun fried in lard that translates to “fast night.” In Portugal, the Carnival treat of choice is the malasada—dough that’s been fried and then coated in sugar or cinnamon. Italy has two: the castagnole, a liqueur-soaked puff of fried dough, and cenci, which looks something like sugar-dusted lasagna noodles. Spain consumes many Carnival sweets according to region, including the buñuelo de viento, a ball of fried dough filled with cream, and the pestiño, which arrives glazed in honey.
Immigrants to the United States brought their own pre-Lenten traditions along with them, including pączki, a jelly-filled doughnut from Poland. (Many Polish communities in the United States still call Fat Tuesday Pączki Day.) And then, of course, there are the famous beignets of New Orleans, the heart of Mardi Gras celebrations this side of the pond. These puffy squares of fried dough, which are coated in so much powdered sugar you can count on coating yourself, too, arrived in Crescent City in the eighteenth century, when French settlers in the Acadian region of Canada were deported and made for modern-day Louisiana.
There is no shortage of beignets around the French Quarter—Café Du Monde has been serving the classic since 1892, of course, but you can also grab them to go from Morning Call Coffee Stand, or stop by the Vintage for a “fancy beignet flight” with constantly changing flavors like king cake or s’mores. Sample sweet praline beignets at Loretta’s Authentic Pralines, or make your own at home with New Orleans chef Nina Compton’s recipe, which incorporates banana and pecan rum caramel. But as the many global variations prove, any fried dough will nod to the tradition, so consider this permission to stop by Krispy Kreme on Tuesday.
Lindsey Liles joined Garden & Gun in 2020 after completing a master’s in literature in Scotland and a Fulbright grant in Brazil. The Arkansas native is G&G’s digital reporter, covering all aspects of the South, and she especially enjoys putting her biology background to use by writing about wildlife and conservation. She lives on Johns Island, South Carolina.
