a donut · PAFastnacht
also: fasnacht · faschnacht · fosnaught · kinkling
Spelled six ways in six counties, and everybody thinks theirs is the spelling.
A Pennsylvania Dutch fried donut, often made with potato dough, eaten in the days of Carnival and above all on Shrove Tuesday. Square or diamond cut, sometimes with a slit rather than a hole, sometimes plain, sometimes dusted with table sugar.
The story Cited · wp-fasnacht-doughnut
The point of it is the pantry. Fasnachts were made to use up lard, sugar, fat and butter before Lent, when households gave them up. The Pennsylvania Dutch counties — Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Berks and around — keep the day, and in eastern Pennsylvania the supermarkets carry them. Parts of Maryland call them kinklings or kuechles and bakeries sell them on Shrove Tuesday only.
The Polish pączek is the same idea a few hundred miles west. In Poland pączki are eaten on the Thursday before; in Polish-American communities the date has moved to Fasnacht Day, which is to say Tuesday.
How it is done Cited · wp-fasnacht-doughnut
Potato dough, risen, rolled, cut in squares or diamonds, slit in the middle, fried. Eaten with butter or golden syrup, which is the part outsiders find strange and Pennsylvania finds obvious.
Today Tradition
Churches and fire halls still sell them by pre-order, by the dozen, and stop when the batch is gone.
The particulars
| dough | potato |
|---|---|
| finish | sugared |
| state | PA |
| region | Pennsylvania Dutch country |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Who it runs with
Where we got it
- Fasnacht (doughnut) — Wikipedia · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.