Pancake Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
Almost every cuisine has a pancake, and this quiz eats its way through all of them in 50 free questions with answers: American flapjacks and silver dollars, Breton galettes and crêpes Suzette, Russian blini, Dutch poffertjes, Ethiopian injera, South Indian dosa, Chinese jianbing, Japanese okonomiyaki, Austrian Kaiserschmarrn and Newfoundland toutons. It also covers the traditions: why pancakes are eaten on Shrove Tuesday, the Olney race that has run since 1445, the French coin-flipping custom on Candlemas, the Swedish Thursday pea-soup habit, and the modern history of ready-mix batter, IHOP and the maple syrup that goes on top. Easy questions for a family breakfast, hard ones for a Pancake Day pub quiz. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What leavening agent gives American and Scottish pancakes their thick, fluffy texture?
Baking powder
Baking powder is the usual raising agent in American and Scottish pancake batter; French crêpes skip it, which is why they come out thin enough to roll.
Q 02Which of these is NOT another name for a pancake in North America?
Popover
A popover is a puffed egg batter baked in a hot tin, closer to a Yorkshire pudding; the other three are all pancakes.
Q 03A 'silver dollar' pancake is about how big across?
2 to 3 inches
2 to 3 inches: a silver dollar pancake is a small round of about 3 inches, a bit bigger than the US silver dollar coins minted before 1979.
Q 04Historically, why were pancakes made on Shrove Tuesday?
To use up fat and eggs before Lent
"To use up fat and eggs before Lent": rich foods were given up for the fast, so households cooked them into pancakes; the French name Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday.
Q 05Shrove Tuesday can fall on any date within which range?
3 February to 9 March
3 February to 9 March: Shrove Tuesday falls 47 days before Easter, which itself ranges from 22 March to 25 April, so the pancake day moves with the moon.
Q 06The famous pancake race in Olney, England, is said to have begun in which year?
1445
1445 is the traditional date: legend says an Olney housewife heard the shriving bell and ran to church clutching her frying pan.
Q 07Since 1950, Olney has raced its Shrove Tuesday pancake race against a town in which US state?
Kansas
Kansas: the town of Liberal has run its race against Olney since 1950, with times compared across the Atlantic; runners must flip their pancake at the start and finish.
Q 08Ancient Greek tagenites (pancakes) used wheat flour, olive oil, curdled milk and which sweetener?
Honey
Honey sweetened tagenites, the Greek pancakes of wheat flour, olive oil and curdled milk served for breakfast over two thousand years ago; the name comes from tagenon, a frying pan.
Q 09The word crêpe comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Curled
Curled: crêpe comes via Old French from the Latin crispus, meaning curled or wavy, the same root that gives English 'crisp'.
Q 10In France, crêpes are traditionally eaten on La Chandeleur, or Candlemas, which falls on which date?
2 February
2 February is Candlemas, forty days after Christmas; French custom says to flip the Chandeleur crêpe while holding a gold coin in the other hand for a year of good fortune.
Q 11A galette bretonne, the savoury pancake of Brittany, is made from which flour?
Buckwheat
Buckwheat flour, called blé noir or sarrasin in Brittany, gives the galette its dark colour and makes the batter naturally gluten-free; the classic filling is ham, cheese and an egg.
Q 12Which drink is the traditional partner for galettes in a Breton crêperie?
Cider
Cider is the classic partner: Breton crêperies serve dry cidre in a bolée, a handleless bowl, alongside savoury galettes.
Q 13Crêpes Suzette are flambéed with a sauce including a liqueur flavoured with what?
Orange
Orange: the sauce is caramelised butter, sugar and orange juice with an orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier; waiter Henri Charpentier claimed to have invented it by accident in Monte Carlo in 1895.
Q 21Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?
Teff
Teff, a tiny Ethiopian highland grain, is fermented into the sour batter; injera doubles as plate and spoon, with stews ladled onto it and torn pieces used to scoop them up.
Q 22A South Indian dosa is made from a fermented batter of rice and which pulse?
Black gram
Black gram, the pulse sold as urad dal, is soaked and ground with rice to make the fermented batter; a masala dosa is folded around spiced potatoes with sambar and coconut chutney.
Q 23Jianbing, China's popular street breakfast, is a crêpe topped with an egg and what crispy element?
A fried cracker
Q 14Russian blini are traditionally eaten in the week before Lent, known as what?
Maslenitsa
Maslenitsa, from maslo, butter, is the week of feasting before Orthodox Lent; its round golden blini are said to stand for the returning sun.
Q 15Blini differ from crêpes mainly because their batter contains what?
Yeast
Yeast: traditional blini are raised with a yeasted batter, making them thicker and spongier than an unleavened crêpe; they are often topped with sour cream and caviar.
Q 16Dutch pannenkoeken are typically about how wide?
30 cm (12 in)
30 cm (12 in) is the usual width: pannenkoeken are larger and a little thicker than crêpes, eaten with bacon and stroop syrup or with apple and cinnamon.
Q 17Poffertjes, the tiny puffed Dutch pancakes, are cooked in what?
A dimpled pan
A dimpled pan, the cast-iron poffertjespan, gives them their small puffed shape; they are served hot with butter and powdered sugar at fairs and markets.
Q 18The Japanese savoury pancake okonomiyaki takes its name from words meaning what?
'How you like it' and 'grilled'
'How you like it' and 'grilled': okonomi means 'as you like' and yaki means grilled, fitting a dish whose batter takes whatever fillings the cook prefers.
Q 19What is the main vegetable in okonomiyaki?
Cabbage
Cabbage, finely shredded, is the bulk of an okonomiyaki; Osaka-style mixes it into the batter while Hiroshima-style layers it on top of a thin crêpe base.
Q 20Japanese dorayaki are two small pancakes sandwiched around what filling?
Sweet red bean paste
Sweet red bean paste, called anko, fills the two castella-style pancakes; dorayaki are famously the favourite food of the robot cat Doraemon.
A fried cracker, the crisp wafer called baocui, is folded inside the egg-topped crêpe with sweet bean and chilli sauces; Tianjin's jianbing guozi wraps a fried dough stick instead.
Q 24Hungarian palacsinta gets its name, via Romanian, from which Latin word?
Placenta
Placenta was Latin for a flat cake; the word passed into Romanian as plăcintă and then into Hungarian; the Gundel palacsinta version is filled with walnuts and doused in chocolate sauce.
Q 25The shredded caramelised pancake of Austria is named after which ruler?
Emperor Franz Joseph I
Emperor Franz Joseph I gives the dish its name; legend says his wife Elisabeth refused the rich dessert and the emperor finished her portion himself.
Q 26In Sweden, pancakes are traditionally eaten for lunch on which day of the week, after pea soup?
Thursday
The habit is said to date from Catholic times, when Friday was a fast day and Thursday the last chance for a filling meal.
Q 27Toutons, small pancakes fried in pork fat and served with molasses, come from which place?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland is home to toutons: rounds of leftover bread dough fried in pork fat and eaten with molasses, a breakfast that began in the island's fishing outports.
Q 28South African pannekoek are traditionally served with what?
Cinnamon sugar and lemon
Cinnamon sugar and lemon is the classic topping: the thin pannekoek is sprinkled, squeezed with lemon and rolled up, a fixture of church fetes and rainy days.
Q 29In Australia and New Zealand, small thick pancakes about the size of a coaster are known as what?
Pikelets
Pikelets are the Australian and New Zealand name for small thick pancakes that the British call drop scones or Scotch pancakes.
Q 30A Dutch baby pancake differs from an ordinary pancake in that it is what?
Baked in the oven
"Baked in the oven" in a hot cast-iron pan, the eggy batter puffs dramatically and collapses within minutes; the name was coined at Manca's Café in Seattle in the early 1900s.