Do you know your aebleskiver from your pfannkuchen? An introduction to 23 international pancake varieties. For most Americans, the word "pancake" conjures a stack of fluffy, hot-off-the-griddle flapjacks, a pat of butter slowly melting beneath a rivulet of maple syrup. But pancakes take myriad forms around the world, from delicate French crepes sprinkled with sugar to spongy, sour Ethiopian injera to chewy-crisp Japanese okonomiyaki , studded with seafood and drizzled with sticky brown sauce and mayo.
Once you expand your horizons, you realize that pancakes are a tricky business, and they're nigh impossible to define. I've spent weeks hurtling down the rabbit hole, musing over existential questions like: where do flatbreads end and pancakes begin? Are cookies pancakes? What about biscuits or scones? Is everything pancake? You may be relieved to learn that everything is not, in fact, pancake. But pancakes are one of mankind's oldest prepared foods, which is why you'll find some iteration of them in virtually every cuisine around the world.
The very concept of the pancake is millennia old, a legacy of our earliest forays into grain-milling. Indeed, it's likely that the earliest pancakes were indistinguishable from flatbreadsβI'm talking wild grains, pulverized between a couple of stones, mixed into a paste with water, and cooked on greased rocks heated over an open fire.
That's right: pancakes? Totally Paleolithic food. And that's where a clearer understanding of the pancake starts to emerge: Both pancakes and flatbreads embody the idea that the most common and basic ingredients can combine into a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. They're quick-cooking and don't require anything more than a pan or a rock and a heat source, but they're also the basis for more involved cooking methods, canvases for countless ingredient combinations.
They're staple foods to be peppered with seafood, poultry, aromatics, or fruit; topped with whipped cream or cheeses, syrups, caviar, chutneys, or jam; used as a wrap for hearty stewed meats and vegetables. Tortillas become tacos; injera an entire Ethiopian feast; arepas a hearty, satisfying Venezuelan sandwich. In other words, a pancake, no matter how you define it, is a lens through which to see the world.
