“A bagel is a doughnut dipped in concrete” is cited in print from at least 1951; “doughnuts dipped in cement” was used by at least 1952. “Cement doughnut” and “scone of stone” are both cited in print from a 1972 Associated Press story about the bagel.
Milton Berle (July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an Emmy-winning American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC’s Texaco Star Theater (1948–55), he was the first major star of television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr. Television to millions during TV’s golden age.
NOT EVERYONE eats bagels, it seems. A bagel, be it known, is a kind of hard roll facetiously described as being a doughnut dipped in concrete.
Meanwhile I must pass along the comedians’ classic definitions: “Bagel—a doughnut dipped in cement, a Jewish brass-knuckle; Lox—herring with high blood pressure.
A bearded Beatnik plans to bring a bagel bistro to Washington. (...) Someone once described them as doughnuts dipped in concrete.
Mrs. Kashi Leonard, Bountiful...sends Mrs. Lorna Adams the recipe for Bagel she requested last week...."The standard definition for Bagel is,” she writes, “a doughnut dipped in cement.”...They sure can harden fast, so eat ‘em while they’re fresh—or toast them.
You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy bagels. Baking and freezing the “cement doughnuts” has become a nationwide business.
NEW YORK (AP)—Comedians have made it a staple of their repertoires. A cement doughnut, they’ve called it. The scone of stone.
But the bagel has become a favorite treat of an estimated six million Americans since Jewish immigrants first brought the “roll with the hole” to U.S. shores at the end of the last century.
The chewy, baked bagel, known to comics as a cement doughnut or as the scone of stone, piled with smoked salmon, or lox, on a mortar of cream cheese, became the cornerstone of many a monumental nosh, or snack.
“Aw, they taste too healthy. A bagel to me is a cement doughnut,” Nord said.
It has been so drastic that the small “cement doughnut” is almost a relic. Most bagels today are neither small nor cementlike. Instead they are soft and enormous, and practically devoid of the chewiness for which they were known and loved. They hardly ever give you heartburn anymore.
NEW YORK (UPI)—A Brooklyn baker might describe the pre-baking process for the famous roll with a hole as “berling bagels,” and that is close to what happened at a luncheon at Manhattan’s 21 Club.
Comic Milton Berle—who claims to have delivered the world’s first bagel joke—honored the world’s largest bagel distributor Thursday. He said 65 years ago—when he was 12—he was the one to describe the bagel as “a donut dipped in cement.” The line has become a standard today in the stand-up comic’s repertoire.
“That’s the standard, and who should know more about schtick and standard jokes than Uncle Miltie?” he said.
Ridiculed in the past as a concrete doughnut, it is becoming softer and lighter.
Bagelites perish the thought. The object of their desire has long been called “a cement doughnut,” and purists relish the characteristics that make this a well-earned title.
In the beginning, bagels were small. They became hard in six or seven hours and were affectionately known as cement doughnuts. They were served with salty lox and a very thick layer of cream cheese, known as a shmeer, which helped moderate the saltiness of the lox.
While it may seem that the bagel boom happened overnight, it actually follows decades of pavement pounding by bagel makers who realized their survival hinged on expanding beyond Jewish neighborhoods into new markets where many consumers thought the “cement doughnut” was a paperweight.