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
French crêpes and Nordic pancakes skip it entirely, 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
It is named for being a shade 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
The name comes from 'shrive', to be absolved after confession; the French call the same day Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday.
Q 05Shrove Tuesday can fall on any date within which range?
3 February to 9 March
It sits 47 days before Easter, so it moves with the moon; the earliest and latest are about five weeks apart.
Q 06The famous pancake race in Olney, England, is said to have begun in which year?
1445
Legend says a housewife heard the church bell and ran to the service still holding her frying pan, apron and headscarf on.
Q 07Since 1950, Olney has raced its Shrove Tuesday pancake race against a town in which US state?
Kansas
The town is Liberal, and the two compare times across the Atlantic each year; 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
They were a breakfast food more than two thousand years ago; the name comes from the Greek word for a frying pan.
Q 09The word crêpe comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Curled
Crispus, curly or wrinkled, describes the edges of a crêpe lifting in the pan.
Q 10In France, crêpes are traditionally eaten on La Chandeleur, or Candlemas, which falls on which date?
2 February
Custom says to hold a gold coin in one hand while flipping the crêpe with the other for a year of good fortune.
Q 11A galette bretonne, the savoury pancake of Brittany, is made from which flour?
Buckwheat
The batter is naturally gluten-free, and the classic filling is ham, cheese and an egg.
Q 12Buckwheat, used in soba and Breton galettes, is not a grass. Which plants is it most closely related to?
Rhubarb and sorrel
That is why it counts as a pseudocereal, and why buckwheat galettes and soba noodles are naturally gluten-free.
Q 13Crêpes Suzette are flambéed with a sauce including a liqueur flavoured with what?
Orange
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.
Q 21Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?
Teff
It doubles as the plate and the spoon: stews are ladled onto it and diners tear pieces off to scoop them up.
Q 22A South Indian dosa is made from a fermented batter of rice and which pulse?
Black gram
A masala dosa is folded around spiced potatoes and served 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
Its history is traced back some 2,000 years to Shandong; Tianjin made it famous.
Q 14Russian blini are traditionally eaten in the week before Lent, known as what?
Maslenitsa
The name means butter week; the round golden blini are said to stand for the returning sun.
Q 15Blini differ from crêpes mainly because their batter contains what?
Yeast
They are also often topped with sour cream and caviar.
Q 16Dutch pannenkoeken are typically about how wide?
30 cm (12 in)
They are a little thicker than crêpes and often eaten with bacon and stroop syrup, or apple and cinnamon.
Q 17Poffertjes, the tiny puffed Dutch pancakes, are cooked in what?
A dimpled pan
They are leavened and 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'
Osaka mixes the ingredients into the batter; Hiroshima layers them, with a bed of yakisoba noodles.
Q 19What is the main vegetable in okonomiyaki?
Cabbage
Hiroshima-style uses three or four times as much of it as the Osaka version, layered rather than mixed.
Q 20Japanese dorayaki are two small pancakes sandwiched around what filling?
Sweet red bean paste
They are the favourite food of the cartoon cat Doraemon, which has done wonders for sales.
Q 24Hungarian palacsinta gets its name, via Romanian, from which Latin word?
Placenta
In Latin it just meant a flat cake; 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
Legend says his wife Elisabeth refused the rich dessert, and he ate her portion and called it a Schmarrn, a mess.
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
They started as a way of using up leftover bread dough in fishing outports.
Q 28South African pannekoek are traditionally served with what?
Cinnamon sugar and lemon
They are a fixture at church fetes and rugby matches, especially on rainy days.
Q 29In Australia and New Zealand, small thick pancakes about the size of a coaster are known as what?
Pikelets
The British call the same thing drop scones or Scotch pancakes.
Q 30A Dutch baby pancake differs from an ordinary pancake in that it is what?
Baked in the oven
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.