In lockdown? Don’t flip out—flip a pancake instead!
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Easy Pancakes from Around the World

Rembrandt sketched them. Shakespeare wrote them into his plays. Sweden established an academy in their honor. They’ve starred in ancient tales and modern movies, inspired mad dashes and dashes of spice and color.

They are pancakes. For many of us, that means a common breakfast food that takes minutes to cook, seconds to eat, and hours to walk off. In fact, that little circle on your plate connects to a multitude of ingredients, shapes, languages, and traditions. Oh, I see: Known by hundreds of names and varieties around the world, this food encompasses a rich “pan” cultural cuisine.

Let’s explore this sisterhood of the traveling pancakes. Along the way, we’ll see how different kinds of pancakes  stack up. On your return, peruse our menu of online classes to cook easy pancakes from around the world.

Popular in Slavic culture, palatschinke are Greco-Roman in origin.
MariaPolna/ Pxhere

Breakfast of Ancient Champions

For many culinary historians, all foods lead to ancient Rome. The Romans spiced their pancakes and dubbed them Alita Dolcia. Lyrical but lazy, it simply means “another sweet.” In the second century, Greek physician Galen saw fit to provide a detailed recipe for them in his medical tome. Still popular today, traditional teganitai are sizzled in olive oil and topped with honey.

But did the Greeks invent pancakes as is often claimed? It’s true that many forms of pancake developed throughout Europe, became popular in the Middle Ages, and later crossed the Atlantic. However, archaeological evidence shows that indigenous peoples of the Americas had been making cachapas, arepas, and other corn-based pancakes since early pre-Columbian times.

Starchier than tortillas, Venezuelan cachapas are filled with creamy cheese
and eaten hot off the griddle.
nehopelon/ iStock

Early on, almost every culture improvised griddles from hot stones. At food festivals in Lucca, Italy, a few chefs still rock this method. To make necci, they pour batter onto hot, flat stones, cover them with chestnut leaves, and stack them on top of each other. The choice of leaves is apt, because necci are made with chestnut flour, milled from the harvest of local forests.

Flour Power

Chestnuts, corn—these are just two items on a long list of pancake possibilities, as well as reminders that “gluten-free” pancakes are nothing new. The flours that power a culture’s popular pancakes include:

• rice: India’s dosa and malpua, Korea’s jeon
• chickpeas: Southern France’s socca
• beans: Nigeria’s akara, Japan’s dorayaki
• potatoes: Ireland’s boxty, Ecuador’s llapingachos
• buckwheat (which isn’t a wheat at all): New Brunswick’s ploye, Nepal’s phapar ko roti)

Add wheat, and suddenly the globe is paved in pancakes from Samoa (panikeke) to Morocco (beghrir) to New Zealand (pikelets).

India’s malpua has sweetened palates for 3,000 years.
Kailash Kumar/ iStock

What’s in Your Pancake?

The variety of flours is matched by what different cultures put on, and in, their pancakes. The world beyond maple syrup extends to condensed milk (Thailand), sour cream (Russia), shredded coconut (Brazil), pork fat with lingonberries (Sweden), bonito fish flakes (Japan), and edible flowers (Korea).

The look varies widely, too. Italy’s borlenghi are so big they’re also known as cartwheel pancakes. By contrast, Dutch poffertjes are teensy—they originated in a church as an improved form of communion host. Amen!

Purposely scrambled, Austria’s Kaiserschmarrn means “Emperor’s mess.”
Pxhere

As for color, Indonesia’s kue ape pancakes come by their vibrant green naturally, thanks to pandan. The leaves of this tropical  plant are used to make an extract that’s been compared to vanilla. The batter is cooked in woks to create a spongy center and a crispy edge. Home cooks— which is all of us these days—can find pandan flavoring extract for sale online and at our local Asian markets.

Kue ape are made with wheat flour, coconut milk, and palm sugar.
MielPhotos2008/ iStock

Not all pancake ingredients catch on, of course. In Miss Parloa’s New Cookbook (Boston, 1881) the pancake mix called for “a bowl of snow.” Seems it met the melts-in-your-mouth test, but was a little too back-to-the-land.

Pancake Planet

The world’s pancakes come with a generous side of fascinating stories.

• According to traditional storytellers, it wasn’t the gingerbread man, but the pancake who ran away. Well, rolled. The runaway pancake features in several “fleeing food” tales, including in Norway, Germany, and Russia.
• In Japanese legend, a samurai accidentally left his gong at a farmer’s house where he had been hiding. The farmer used it to cook “gong cakes,” the literal meaning of dorayaki. Dorayaki pancakes are also the favorite food of a time-traveling robot cat. Doraemon is the title character of a smash-hit series of manga books and movies.
• In Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” the Bard flips pancakes into wordplay. Coincidentally, “as you like it” is the literal meaning of okonomiyaki, another Japanese pancake.
• Several countries have religious traditions of eating pancakes the night before Lent. In France during La Chandeleur, the pancake of choice is a crêpe. An old tradition was to place one crêpe into a drawer to attract prosperity. It would certainly have attracted something.

On hold for now, the Pancake Race in Olney, England was first run in 1445.
Robin Meyerscough/ CC BY 2.0

Coming full circle, the most astonishing thing about pancakes remains their sheer variety, even when considered (or better yet, eaten) within a single country. Italian pancakes alone include crespelle al bitto, ciaffignone, chisciöl, scrippelle ‘mbusse, and several others. In short, we’ve only just scratched the surface of the pancake’s many layers.

That’s all the more reason to get your hands on recipes for easy pancakes from around the world. Check out the menu below this post. We’ve stuffed it like a savory Breton galette with links to virtual cooking classes and entertaining demos. After all, what goes better with pancakes than a side of links?

Have yourself a merry little pancake!
mel_88/ Pixabay

Get cooking! Click on a pancake name to sign up for a live online cooking class: potato pancakes, crêpes, Japanese soufflé pancakes, Bavarian apple pancakes, Osaka style okonomiyaki, and Chinese scallion pancakes.

Can’t wait? Click on a place name for quick how-to videos: Venezuela (cachapas), Nepal (phapar ko roti), Austria (kaiserschmarrn, in German with English captions), Ireland (boxty).

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.