Photo: enoch simpson

This "plain" doughscuit is the brainchild of brothers Enoch and Caleb Simpson. 

A priori, you’d think that the category of deep-fried pastries with portmanteau-word names would be fairly small. But defying all reason, we have the insanely popular Cronut, its evil twin the dossant, and now, at Endgrain (1851 W. Addison St., 773-687-8191), the doughscuit.

A doughscuit consists of doughnut-shaped pastry similar to a biscuit, but lighter. It is then deep-fried, glazed, and bisected like a bagel. A creamy filling is spread on one cut surface, and the halves are reassembled into a sweet sandwich. They cost $3 each.

Doughscuits, the creation of Endgrain’s chef Enoch Simpson and his brother/partner Caleb, come in two flavors. The one Simpson calls "plain" combines a honey-glazed biscuit with a filling of crème fraîche and vanilla pastry cream. The other takes a brown-sugar glaze and coconut flakes, with a crème fraîche–chocolate pastry cream filling. Other combinations, such as peanut butter and jelly, are in the works.

The Cronut craze and its spawn have arisen so suddenly and so buzzily that it’s hard to say whether it will last (like cupcakes) or fizzle (like Crystal Pepsi).

Do doughscuits have a future? Simpson answers the question not with a prediction but with a kind of stoic pragmatism: “If you deep-fry anything, it’s pretty awesome,” he says.