In which 1809 novel did the word 'doughnut' first appear in print?

The word “doughnut” first appeared in the 1809 novel A History of New York by Washington Irving.

Irving described Dutch settlers eating “balls of sweetened dough” fried in hog’s fat and called “dough-nuts, or olykoeks.” The book was written as a humorous history of New York, presenting Dutch colonial customs through Irving’s comic narrator, Diedrich Knickerbocker.

The wording “first appeared in print” needs a small historical qualification. An 1808 American short story appears to contain an earlier printed use of “dough-nuts,” but Irving’s 1809 book is the famous early literary source and the standard answer to this trivia question. The spelling was originally commonly written with a hyphen.

Irving’s doughnuts were not necessarily ring-shaped. They were small, rounded pieces of fried dough, closer to what modern readers might call doughnut holes. The ring shape became popular later, partly because removing the center helped the dough cook more evenly.