Pancakes

A thin, flat cake cooked in a pan, the Pancake is a popular breakfast and snack across much of the world. With basics like egg, milk, and butter, it can be topped with a variety of options like butter, honey, fruits, jams, chocolate sauce, and more.

This staple dish has prehistoric roots. About 5,300 years ago, Otzi the Iceman, whose remains were found in 1991 in the Italian Alps, offers insight into what was eaten during the Neolithic age. His last meal included ground einkorn wheat, with bits of charcoal, suggesting it was cooked over an open fire, in the form of a Pancake. The ancient Greeks and Romans also ate Pancakes topped with honey. And the British, around the 16th century, had them with spices, rosewater, apples, and more.

Pancakes reached America through its colonisers, and were made of buckwheat or cornmeal, which were earlier known as "Hoe Cakes", "Johnny Cakes", or "Slapjacks". Amelia Simmons’ 1796 book American Cookery has two Pancake recipes—one for “Johnny Cake, or Hoe Cake”, which uses milk, “Indian meal” and molasses; and the other for “Indian Slapjack”, which does not have the molasses but does use four eggs.

Today, commercialisation has led to the birth of Pancake mixes, making the snack easily accessible to all, in several flavours and iterations.

Fun fact: Christians who observe Shrove Tuesday, a traditional feast a day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, also call it Pancake Day. This day was the final opportunity to use eggs and fats before the fasting began and the ingredients went bad. And Pancakes were the perfect recipe for that!