fried cakes

[Lynne Murphy]

Anne Lambert wrote:
> See my immortal, unpublished master's thesis, "American Regional Names for  Some
> Fast Food Items" (Harvard University, March 1991) : "fried cake" is upstate NY,
> northern PA, Western Reserve of Ohio (spread by settlers from the East), parts of
> Connecticut, and the Platte River area of Nebraska and the Dakotas (also due to
> settlers).  It is being replaced by "doughnut".

I agree that "doughnut" is replacing "fried cake", but for those of us with "fried
cake" in our vocabularies, there is a semantic difference between fried cakes and
doughnuts.  All fried cakes are doughnuts but not all doughnuts are fried cakes.
And in some parts of the country, it's extremely hard to buy a doughnut that is a
fried cake.  When I moved out of the northeast, I found that doughnuts tend to be
baked in other parts of the country (why bother eating a baked doughnut? ick!), and
even if they're fried, they're hard to find without glazing on them (why bother
eating a glazed doughnut? ick!).  I wouldn't call anything with glazing on it a
fried cake.  Then it's a doughnut.

The best fried cakes are the ones flavored with apple cider that you can get at the
Apple Shed in the hamlet of Fairville (Town of Arcadia), New York.

Lynne