50 Fun Facts About Pancake

What leavening agent gives American and Scottish pancakes their thick, fluffy texture?

French crêpes and Nordic pancakes skip it entirely, which is why they come out thin enough to roll.

Which of these is NOT another name for a pancake in North America?

A popover is a puffed egg batter baked in a hot tin, closer to a Yorkshire pudding; the other three are all pancakes.

A 'silver dollar' pancake is about how big across?

It is named for being a shade bigger than the US silver dollar coins minted before 1979.

Historically, why were pancakes made on Shrove Tuesday?

The name comes from 'shrive', to be absolved after confession; the French call the same day Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday can fall on any date within which range?

It sits 47 days before Easter, so it moves with the moon; the earliest and latest are about five weeks apart.

The famous pancake race in Olney, England, is said to have begun in which year?

Legend says a housewife heard the church bell and ran to the service still holding her frying pan, apron and headscarf on.

Since 1950, Olney has raced its Shrove Tuesday pancake race against a town in which US state?

The town is Liberal, and the two compare times across the Atlantic each year; runners must flip their pancake at the start and finish.

Ancient Greek tagenites (pancakes) used wheat flour, olive oil, curdled milk and which sweetener?

They were a breakfast food more than two thousand years ago; the name comes from the Greek word for a frying pan.

The word crêpe comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Crispus, curly or wrinkled, describes the edges of a crêpe lifting in the pan.

In France, crêpes are traditionally eaten on La Chandeleur, or Candlemas, which falls on which date?

Custom says to hold a gold coin in one hand while flipping the crêpe with the other for a year of good fortune.

A galette bretonne, the savoury pancake of Brittany, is made from which flour?

The batter is naturally gluten-free, and the classic filling is ham, cheese and an egg.

Buckwheat, used in soba and Breton galettes, is not a grass. Which plants is it most closely related to?

That is why it counts as a pseudocereal, and why buckwheat galettes and soba noodles are naturally gluten-free.

Crêpes Suzette are flambéed with a sauce including a liqueur flavoured with what?

One story credits a 14-year-old waiter, Henri Charpentier, with inventing it by accident for the Prince of Wales in Monte Carlo in 1895.

Russian blini are traditionally eaten in the week before Lent, known as what?

The name means butter week; the round golden blini are said to stand for the returning sun.

Blini differ from crêpes mainly because their batter contains what?

They are also often topped with sour cream and caviar.

Dutch pannenkoeken are typically about how wide?

They are a little thicker than crêpes and often eaten with bacon and stroop syrup, or apple and cinnamon.

Poffertjes, the tiny puffed Dutch pancakes, are cooked in what?

They are leavened and served hot with butter and powdered sugar at fairs and markets.

The Japanese savoury pancake okonomiyaki takes its name from words meaning what?

Osaka mixes the ingredients into the batter; Hiroshima layers them, with a bed of yakisoba noodles.

What is the main vegetable in okonomiyaki?

Hiroshima-style uses three or four times as much of it as the Osaka version, layered rather than mixed.

Japanese dorayaki are two small pancakes sandwiched around what filling?

They are the favourite food of the cartoon cat Doraemon, which has done wonders for sales.

Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?

It doubles as the plate and the spoon: stews are ladled onto it and diners tear pieces off to scoop them up.

A South Indian dosa is made from a fermented batter of rice and which pulse?

A masala dosa is folded around spiced potatoes and served with sambar and coconut chutney.

Jianbing, China's popular street breakfast, is a crêpe topped with an egg and what crispy element?

Its history is traced back some 2,000 years to Shandong; Tianjin made it famous.

Hungarian palacsinta gets its name, via Romanian, from which Latin word?

In Latin it just meant a flat cake; the Gundel palacsinta version is filled with walnuts and doused in chocolate sauce.

The shredded caramelised pancake of Austria is named after which ruler?

Legend says his wife Elisabeth refused the rich dessert, and he ate her portion and called it a Schmarrn, a mess.

In Sweden, pancakes are traditionally eaten for lunch on which day of the week, after pea soup?

The habit is said to date from Catholic times, when Friday was a fast day and Thursday the last chance for a filling meal.

Toutons, small pancakes fried in pork fat and served with molasses, come from which place?

They started as a way of using up leftover bread dough in fishing outports.

South African pannekoek are traditionally served with what?

They are a fixture at church fetes and rugby matches, especially on rainy days.

In Australia and New Zealand, small thick pancakes about the size of a coaster are known as what?

The British call the same thing drop scones or Scotch pancakes.

A Dutch baby pancake differs from an ordinary pancake in that it is what?

It puffs up like a popover in a hot cast-iron pan and collapses within minutes; the name was coined at a Seattle café in the early 1900s.

The 'Dutch' in Dutch baby pancake is thought to be a corruption of which word?

The dish is essentially a German pancake, and one of Victor Manca's daughters is credited with the mangled name.

A johnnycake, also called a hoecake, is a flatbread made from what?

The Narragansett people were making them in the 1600s and taught the technique to European settlers.

Which brand, launched in 1889, is described as the first ready-mix pancake flour?

It was renamed Pearl Milling Company in 2021 after decades of criticism of the racial stereotype it was built on.

Nancy Green cooked pancakes as the living face of a brand at which 1893 event?

She was the first of several Black women hired to portray the character over the following century.

In 2021 the pancake-mix brand long fronted by a stereotyped Black cook was renamed what?

The name came from the St. Joseph, Missouri mill that had made the original mix in the 1880s.

Bisquick, the all-purpose baking mix used for countless American pancakes, went on sale in which year?

General Mills got the idea from a train dining-car chef who kept pre-mixed biscuit batter on ice.

The chemical leavener in a box of pancake mix is a blend of a carbonate or bicarbonate and what?

Wet it and heat it and it gives off carbon dioxide, which is what puts the bubbles in a pancake.

Which Canadian province produces about 72 percent of the world's maple syrup?

Vermont is the biggest US producer, with a record 2.5 million gallons in 2022.

Roughly how many volumes of maple sap must be boiled down to make one volume of syrup?

Sugar maple sap is only two to five percent sugar, and it only runs in late winter and early spring.

Thieves in the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist refilled the emptied barrels with what?

The haul was worth about C$18.7 million and was only noticed when an inspector found a barrel that was suspiciously light.

IHOP, the International House of Pancakes, opened its first restaurant in 1958 where?

Brothers Jerry and Al Lapin started it in Burbank; by the mid-2020s the chain had more than 1,800 locations.

In June 2018 IHOP briefly changed its name to IHOb. What did the 'b' stand for?

The stunt was meant to remind people the chain served lunch and dinner; the pancakes came back a month later.

Sweden's Shrove Tuesday treat is not a pancake but a semla. What is it?

King Adolf Frederick is said to have died in 1771 after finishing a huge meal with his favourite dessert, semla.

Royal Shrovetide Football, played on Shrove Tuesday in Ashbourne, England, has goals how far apart?

The Up'ards and Down'ards have played since at least 1667; the game earned its 'Royal' in 1928 when the Prince of Wales threw up the ball.

Icelandic pönnukökur are cooked on a special pan designed to make the pancake what?

They are rolled with sugar or folded around whipped cream and jam.

Korean savoury pancakes made from batter and vegetables or seafood are called what?

Pajeon, the scallion version, is the best known abroad; jeon are the egg-battered pan-fried cousins.

What is the traditional running attire required of contestants in the Olney pancake race?

Only local women may compete, and each must toss her pancake at the start and again at the finish, over a course of more than 400 yards.

Chinese pancakes such as cong you bing differ from Western ones because they are made from what?

The scallion pancake is rolled, coiled and flattened before frying, giving it flaky layers.

Traditional palacsinta in Central Europe are most often rolled around what filling?

Strawberry and plum jam are the other classics; the savoury Hortobágyi version is filled with meat.

Which Bavarian and Austrian dish is described as a thick but light caramelised pancake?

It is torn into pieces with two forks while it fries and served with plum compote.