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 North American name for a pancake means a baked oat bar in Britain?
Flapjack
Flapjack is a far older word than the oat bar it names in Britain: Shakespeare's Pericles promises 'puddings and flap-jacks', and oats came into it only in the 1930s.
Q 03Which old US coin gives its name to small pancakes only two to three inches across?
Silver dollar
Silver dollar pancakes take their name from the old dollar coin, though at two to three inches they run a little bigger than the coin itself.
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 moves each year because it always falls 47 days before which festival?
Easter
Easter sets the date, and because Easter follows the moon, Pancake Day can land anywhere from 3 February to 9 March.
Q 06In the legend behind Olney's pancake race, what sound sent a housewife running, frying pan still in hand?
A church bell
A church bell, the story goes: in 1445 a housewife busy with her pancakes heard it ring for the shriving service and ran to church, pan and all.
Q 07Since 1950, Olney's pancake racers have competed against the town of Liberal in which US state?
Kansas
Kansas is home to Liberal, whose women race on the same day; the two towns then compare times across the Atlantic to name an international winner.
Q 08Ancient Greek tagenites (pancakes) used wheat flour, olive oil, curdled milk and which sweetener?
Honey
Honey sweetened tagenites, which took their name from the tagenon, the frying pan they were cooked in.
Q 09The word crêpe comes from a Latin word for curled that also gave English which word?
Crisp
Crisp and crêpe both descend from the Latin crispus, curled; in Old English crisp still meant curly, and only later came to mean brittle.
Q 10On La Chandeleur, French custom says flipping a crêpe brings a prosperous year if your other hand holds what?
A gold coin
A gold coin held while flipping is said to bring prosperity; in one old version the coin was then rolled in the crêpe and kept on top of a wardrobe until the next Candlemas, 2 February.
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 traditional drink of Brittany, and crêperies pour it into a bowl or cup rather than a glass.
Q 13Crêpes Suzette are flambéed with a sauce including a liqueur flavoured with what?
Orange
Orange: the sauce caramelises sugar with orange juice and 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 masala dosa is a thin South Indian rice-and-lentil crêpe folded around a spiced filling of what?
Potatoes
Potatoes, cooked into a spiced curry, fill a masala dosa; the batter of rice and black gram is left to ferment before it is spread on a hot griddle.
Q 23Jianbing, China's popular street breakfast, is a crêpe topped with an egg and what crispy element?
A fried cracker
Q 14Maslenitsa, Russia's week-long blini festival, takes its name from the Russian word for which food?
Butter
Butter, maslo in Russian, names the week, which ends with a straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa going up in flames to see off winter.
Q 15Traditional Russian blini 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 traditionally cooked with bacon or with slices of which fruit?
Apple
Apple slices are cooked into the batter of an appelpannenkoek, and in the Netherlands these large pancakes can be the main course, not just dessert.
Q 17Poffertjes, the tiny puffed Dutch pancakes, are cooked in what?
A dimpled pan
A dimpled pan shapes them, and the cook flips each one with a fork while the batter is still half set, which keeps the middle soft.
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 dorayaki, the favourite food of the robot cat Doraemon, who falls for any trap baited with them.
A fried cracker, the thin 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, and anatomists later borrowed it, as 'uterine cake', for the organ; the pancake's name reached Hungarian through Romanian plăcintă.
Q 25The shredded caramelised pancake of Austria is named after which ruler?
Emperor Franz Joseph I
Emperor Franz Joseph I gives Kaiserschmarrn its name; in one telling his wife Elisabeth found the dessert too rich, so he finished her portion as well as his own.
Q 26In Sweden, pancakes are traditionally eaten for lunch on which day of the week, after pea soup?
Thursday
Thursday is said to go back to Catholic times, when Friday was a fast day, so a filling pea soup the day before made sense; the pancakes joined the menu later.
Q 27Toutons, rounds of bread dough fried in pork fat and served with molasses, come from which part of Canada?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland's toutons were a breakfast dish for a reason: bread dough was mixed in the evening and left to rise overnight, so by morning there was dough to fry before the day's baking.
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 are known as what?
Pikelets
Pikelets are small thick pancakes in Australia and New Zealand, but in parts of England the same word means a thin crumpet.
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 pan, the eggy batter puffs up without any raising agent, then sinks soon after it comes out.