WHEN MR. CRUTCHLEY MADE HIS CRULLERS

Was it some weird magic that made Crutchley’s Crullers — and the just-as-popular doughnut holes, or “hearts,” sold in batches of 16 — a crunchy, sugary staple of Southampton Village for decades?

The New York Times thought so: “It is widely believed that he is some sort of a Merlin of the pastry board who mutters secret incantations over the dough as he mixes it. Only one with occult powers, the argument goes, could turn out a product that diverts hardy weight-watchers from their best resolves.”

That Merlin was Fenton E. Crutchley, who, with his wife, Lydia, made the confectionery treats that led to a pair of Times profiles (the second, in 1978, called him “the Picasso of the doughnut”) and generations who still salivate as they recall passing 54 Hampton Road (currently the deli Sean’s Place). As the Times noted, it was “a shop whose aroma is its only advertisement.”

For Kathleen King, she longed for the whiff she’d catch on the bus going past in the morning on the way to grammar school down the street.

“We didn’t have a lot out here back then, in food,” said the professional baker, who created the Tate’s brand of cookies, named for her father, from a recipe on their Southampton farm. “We didn’t have a lot of bakeries. So that was a real treat for us.”

King remembers Crutchley’s “hearts” as a rare delicacy: They were on offer at Sunday coffee hour at Southampton Presbyterian Church, and the kids would get them at the church on Halloween, with apple cider from the Milk Pail. Occasionally, she remembers going into the shop to buy a bag of 16 of the doughnut holes, which were placed in a white paper bag, to which powdered sugar was added, and then shaken.

“Their store had just a long, long hallway to the counter, a massive counter with a very old-fashioned register,” King recalled, allowing that it might have seemed bigger because she was so much smaller. “It seemed to me the entire store was empty.”

It was the ultimate comfort food. “Any food from your childhood that you loved is generally a comfort food,” she said, adding, “Sugar helps everything.”

The “hearts” were more popular than the full crullers, but both were sold in the “crullery,” and Crutchley did a healthy mail order business as well. During the Vietnam War, he sent boxes of treats to local military men serving overseas.

King remembers, too, that they were sold at nearby Herbert’s Market on Main Street, in a white box with “Crutchley’s Crullers” written in green, in Old English font.

Tom Edmonds, executive director of the Southampton History Museum, often talks about both the market and the fried treats, since Herbert’s Market was housed in the Sayre Barn, which is now part of the Rogers Mansion Museum Complex. Back in the 1930s, it was at the corner of Hampton Road and Main Street, and among its famous summer customers was part-time resident Gary Cooper. “He used to buy a bag of crullers from Crutchley’s and hang out in the shop, passing them out to customers,” he said. One day, that included another summer Southampton resident: Zsa Zsa Gabor.

The Crutchley family offered the crullers out of the shop on Hampton Road since 1928, with Fenton helping out his mother starting at age 18. Fenton and Lydia took charge of the operation themselves in 1960 and continued until their retirement in 1979.

The Times reported that he had a self-imposed limit of 200 dozen crullers a day — no word on how many “hearts” that included — and worked up to 110 hours a week in the busy season.

King, always a fan, opened Kathleen’s Bake Shop at age 21 in 1980, and she knew the Crutchleys were retiring but not selling the business, or the recipe. She offered to take over production of the crullers. The Crutchleys politely declined.

A few years later — when, King surmises, the bake shop had proven to be more than just a passing fancy — they returned and offered to sell her both the name and the recipe. Fenton Crutchley came to her shop and taught her to make the crullers himself, and handed over the index card with the recipe.

Eventually, they agreed on a price: “He gave it to me,” she said, suggesting that keeping the tradition alive for a little longer was the more important thing, and “the quality is what they were interested in.”

Mr. Crutchley died in 1989, and Mrs. Crutchley followed him in 2005 at the age of 94. Kathleen King began producing Crutchley’s Crullers at her shop and sold them for years. But interest began to wane — “The generations changed,” she said — so she dropped them. Soon, the outcry brought them back on Wednesdays and Sundays. But, eventually, “we just stopped it, once and for all, and removed the fryer.”

Recently, King was game to recreate the treat in the kitchen of her North Sea home, and was up to the challenge that presented.

“I can’t get them exactly the same at home,” she lamented. One reason: The Crutchleys added new vegetable shortening to the fryer regularly throughout the day, but they didn’t change it. “It created its own flavor,” she said, that can’t be replicated with fresh, and it means cooking them a little longer than might be expected.

The crullers and “hearts” — she made the round doughnut holes instead of the larger ones — require a special ingredient: baking powder instead of yeast, and the baking powder must be non-aluminum. Rumford is the brand Ms. King swears by. Other than that, she said, “there’s no real secret … there was no secret ingredient.”

What makes them special? The “hearts” are small, about the size of a pingpong ball, and coated with confectioner’s sugar, but not too much; they are crispy on the outside, and they melt into a crumbly texture in your mouth, unlike a cake doughnut. The only flavors needed are vanilla and nutmeg. They are simple, and delicious.

The batch was shared with a few people who remember the taste of Crutchley’s Crullers with their hearts as much as their taste buds.

Gayle Pickering deemed them “yummy — just as I remember them.” Her dad, Paul Corwith, remembered that he used to sell eggs to the Crutchleys for the crullers; Fenton would save the cases and return them. “One could always smell the confectioner’s sugar on the case,” he said. “They must have bought that sugar by the ton.”

Local writer Nancy Kane has written about Crutchley as “a jovial white-haired baker with twinkling blue eyes” who was something of a “wizard” to local kids, since he often whispered to himself as his hands worked the dough — incantations, perhaps, they thought.

King noted that the couple, both Quakers, were “iconic in the community, but I don’t know people who really knew them.” Joanne Pateman recalled that they always dressed well, with sparkling white aprons, topped with white hair, surrounded by “very brown wood” in their shop.

Aimee Martin tasted King’s batch and declared them exactly as she recalled them: “the pillowy soft center … the crusty outside … such a mouthwatering memory.”

Mark Parash, co-owner of Sip’n Soda, just a few doors away on Hampton Road, was just a kid of six at the family business when he would run down a couple of doors to pick up a bag of “hearts.” When told he had an opportunity to come taste King’s batch, he said, “My mouth started to salivate. I remember the smell. I remember going in there. What a deep memory it is.”

He popped one in his mouth and nodded immediately. “That’s it — the crunch, soft inside, not too much powder.” A beat. “That is unbelievable. Look — I’m tingling, I promise you I am.”

And then: “I want to be a kid again.”