By the time Otzi the Iceman set off on his final hike 5, years ago, pancakes—or at least something pancake-like—seem to have been a common item of diet. Otzi, whose remains were discovered in a rocky gully in the Italian Alps in , provided us with a wealth of information about what a denizen of the Neolithic ate. His last meals—along with red deer and ibex—featured ground einkorn wheat.
The bits of charcoal he consumed along with it suggest that it was in the form of a pancake, cooked over an open fire. The ancient Greeks and Romans ate pancakes, sweetened with honey; the Elizabethans ate them flavored with spices, rosewater, sherry, and apples. They were traditionally eaten in quantity on Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day, a day of feasting and partying before the beginning of Lent.
Pancakes were a good way to use up stores of about-to-be-forbidden perishables like eggs, milk, and butter, and a yummy last hurrah before the upcoming grim period of church-mandated fast. In the American colonies, pancakes—known as hoe cakes, johnnycakes, or flapjacks—were made with buckwheat or cornmeal. The defining characteristic of the entire vast family of pancakes, however—from crepe to griddlecake, blini, bannock, and beyond—is flatness. In , this recurrent comparison led a trio of geographers with senses of humor—after a dullish trip across the American Midwest—to attempt to determine the relative flatnesses of pancakes and Kansas.
They constructed a topographic profile of a representative pancake—bought from the local International House of Pancakes—using digital imaging processing and a confocal laser microscope, and a similar profile of Kansas, using data from the United States Geological Survey.
The tongue-in-cheek results, published in the Annals of Improbable Research , showed that though pancakes are flat, Kansas is even flatter. Where, mathematically, a value of 1.
The pancake, in contrast, scored a relatively lumpy 0. In fact, there are several states that are even flatter. Their calculations showed that, of the continental states, flattest of the flat is Florida, followed by Illinois, North Dakota, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Delaware. Compared to a Kansas-sized pancake—well, practically everything is flat.
All rights reserved. Our prehistoric ancestors just may have eaten pancakes. You may be surprised to find that pancakes exist all over the world. Each culture seems to have a unique take on them. People eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over the globe. Some examples of this transcultural food include crepes, potato latkes, Irish boxty, Russian blini, Welsh crampog, Indian poori, Hungarian palacsinta, and Dutch pannenkoeken.
However, as it turns out, "pancake syndrome" is an actual medical condition! It occurs in tropical regions when mites contaminate the flour used to make pancakes, which causes consumers to have an allergic reaction. Pancakes come in many different shapes, sizes, and flavors.
They can be sweet, savory, thick, thin, small, or large, but they are all delicious! You can have your choice of Banana, Craisin and Granola, Blueberry, Apple and Pecan, or Cinnamon and Roasted Pecan served fresh off the griddle with butter and maple syrup. Pancakes have really stood the test of time with their extensive history all over the world. They hold a special place in our hearts, reminding us of comfort, family meals, and Saturday mornings.
Take a look at our breakfast menu! Where Did They Come From? The most popular version is made from flour, eggs, buttermilk, and baking powder. Throughout the world different cultures have their own version of the pancake. In Scotland they make a version that is very similar to the flapjack. Australians will often eat them for dessert instead of breakfast.
Germans will cut them into strips and eat them alongside soup. The history of pancakes is a wide ranging one. Dating back to medieval times and spanning all over the globe. From its most basic recipe the pancake is very simple. Flour, baking powder, eggs, and buttermilk are about as simple as a recipe gets.
0コメント