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French colonists have brought their tradition to North America. Today it's the New Orleans version of Fat Tuesday, or ''Mardi Gras'' in French, that is best known. Women from all over the United States use this occasion to come to bare their personal little packages of goodness (not to be confused with ''beignets'', or actual local doughnuts) on Bourbon Street in return for strings of green, yellow and purple beads tossed down to them by men standing on balconies. What a beautiful custom! But still not as good as Polish ''pączki'', is it? Anyway, it seems that in the great melting pot of cultures that the United States are, ''pączki'' come from Poland, but they are eaten on the French Fat Tuesday.

[[File:Kobieta sprzedająca pączki.jpg|thumb|upright|A street vendor of ''pączki'' in 1934 Warsaw]]

So what's the relationship between a doughnut and a ''pączek''? Are these two different things or just English and Polish names for the same thing? Or is ''pączek'' a specific kind of doughnut? The perfect ''pączek'', in my opinion at least, is filled with rose-petal jam, fried in lard and decorated with icing and candied orange zest. But what if you give it a different filling (or no filling at all), fry it butter (or even vegetable oil) and dust with powdered sugar instead? It's still going to be a ''pączek''. And a doughnut. So what makes a ''pączek'' a ''pączek'' and what makes a doughnut a doughnut?