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Make no mistake: the Persian is not Persian. This is a North American pastry through and through. Its name supposedly comes from John J. Pershing, an American General of the First World War, but the closest thing to a primary source is Danny Nucci, owner of Thunder Bay’s Persian Man bakery.

As the story goes, Pershing wandered across the border from a naval base in Duluth, Minnesota — a 3.5 hour drive from Thunder Bay — sometime after World War II. There, he met Art Bennett, the original inventor.



“(Pershing) was walking around the Port Arthur shopping district and popped into Bennett’s Bakery,” said Nucci, who said he heard the story from Julia Bennett, Art’s wife. “Art Bennett was working on some product and they got to talking, and at the end of the day he ended up naming it after him.”

Nucci said that as far as he knows, the name was always “Persian,” not “Pershing.” Theoriesaboundthat it was named in response to theBismarck— a cream-filled donut named after the famed 19th century German statesman — at a time when anti-German sentiment was high, but Nucci said Julia Bennett made no mention of that fact.

I know a lot of different shops that have them Lisa Tucker, owner of Bill's Donut shop in Ohio

Regardless, the name remains the same today, which Nucci admits occasionally leads to disappointed people who wandered into the Persian Man looking for Middle Eastern cuisine.

The Persian’sWikipedia pagetells us that it is not to be confused with thePershing, a similar but different type of donut. The Pershing page asserts, contrary to Nucci’s intel, that a Persian is a type of Pershing. So what’s the difference?

According tomost, there is none, though some ardently maintain that the name and recipe vary with location. As it turns out, the donuts are sold outside Thunder Bay in Ohio, Wisconsin, Maine, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Mississippi and the District of Columbia.

Hell, you can even get them atWalmartandSafeway.

Nucci has sampled some from out of town.

“The good thing about it is that if a person has bought mine and then tries those, he’ll always be coming back,” he said.

Lisa Tucker, the owner of Bill’s Donut Shop in Centerville, Ohio, has “no idea” where the name “Persian” comes from, but inherited the recipe from her father who started baking them in 1960. Her’s includes caramel icing, and sometimes peanuts. Persians are popular in Ohio, she said — they’re sold “pretty well statewide here. I know a lot of different shops that have them.”