 Another theory on their origin came to light in 2013, when a recipe for "dow nuts" was found in a book of recipes and domestic tips written around 1800 by the wife of Baron Thomas Dimsdale, the recipe being given to the dowager Baroness by an acquaintance who transcribed for her the cooking instructions for a "dow nut".The earliest known recorded usage of the term dates to an 1808 short story describing a spread of "fire-cakes and dough-nuts".Washington Irving's reference to "doughnuts" in 1809 in his "History of New York" is more commonly cited as the first written recording of the term.