A Berliner is a German jelly doughnut with no central hole, made from sweet yeast dough fried in lard or cooking oil, with a jam filling, and usually covered in powdered or conventional sugar. History Sugar was very costly until the 16th century, and early doughnuts were usually stuffed with savory fillings like cheese, meat and mushroom. When imports from Caribbean sugar plantations made sugar more affordable, fruit preserves gained in popularity. In the late 15th century the German-language cookbook Kuchenmeisterei was published in Nuremberg (it was later translated into Polish in 1532). It was one of the first cookbooks printed using the Gutenberg press and contains the first known recipe for a jelly doughnut, called Gefüllte Krapfen made with jam-filled yeasted bread dough deep-fried in lard. It's unknown whether this innovation was the author's own or simply a record of an existing practice. Preparation The yeast dough contains a good deal of eggs, milk and butter. For the classical Pfannkuchen made in Berlin the dough is rolled into a ball, deep-fried in lard, whereby the distinctive bright bulge occurs, and then filled with jam. The filling is related to the topping: for plum-butter, powdered sugar; for raspberry, strawberry and cherry jam, sugar; for all other fillings, sugar icing, sometimes flavoured with rum. Today the filling usually is injected with a large syringe or pastry bag after the dough is fried in one piece. Today, Berliners can be purchased throughout the year, though they were traditionally eaten to celebrate on New Year's Eve (Silvester) as well as the carnival holidays (Rosenmontag and Fat Tuesday). A common German practical joke is to secretly fill some Berliners with mustard instead of jam, especially on April Fool's Day, and serve them together with regular Berliners without telling anyone. Names The jelly-filled krapfen were called Berliners in the 1800s, based on the legend of a patriotic baker from Berlin who became a regimental baker after he was deemed unfit for combat by the Prussian Army. When the army was in the field, he "baked" the doughnuts the old-fashioned way, by frying them over an open fire. According to the tale, the soldiers called the pastry Berliner after the baker's hometown. The term Bismarcken (for Otto von Bismarck) came into use by the end of the 19th century. Immigrants from Central Europe settled in the United States in large numbers during the 19th century, and