I'm refreshing this thread as I was wondering about how doughnut shaped came to be a description of a toroid. I presume that this was an invention from the USA.
I never saw a toroidal doughnut in the UK until the mid 1960s, they were always a spherical shape with sugar coating and jam injected into the middle of the ball.
When I was just at starting school age I remember crossing the road with my father to the bakery where he needed to discuss something with the baker, my godfather. We went into the works at the back, once upon a time an ironfoundry, and there was the machine that mixed the dough and produced the balls of dough which came out down a sort of helter-skelter spiral on the outside ready to be deep fried. I was given one to eat, almost too hot to hold. A memmory for life!

Robin