A Weird and Brief History of Pancakes

In my endless pursuit of all things weird, I dropped a swan dive down a 30 minute rabbit hole to find out all I could about pancakes.

 At Best B&B on 1^st Ave in Port Alberni we have a kitchen, so why not make your own pancakes?

Pancakes are a very ancient food. In prehistoric times pancakes were made out of ground cattails and seeds and then cooked on hot rocks. Ortiz, the Iceman, who lived 5,300 years ago in the Italian Alps, had a last meal. Turns out it was a pancake made from Einkorn wheat that had been cooked over coals.

The Greeks and Romans made unleavened pancakes out of flour, oil, and honey. They called them tagenites which means frying pan. In the middle ages a tradition grew from Shrove Tuesday to eating pancakes with the purpose of using forbidden and sinful ingredients like milk and eggs before the fasting period of Lent.

Pancakes show up in famous literature. Shakespeare loved pancakes and often wrote about them in his plays. How many of us remember “Kolobok”? It’s a tale very similar to the Gingerbread Man. A little, round, unleavened bun who runs away from all who want to eat it but can’t outsmart the salivating jaws of a fox. Then there is Paul Bunyan, an American Lumberjack, who is also a giant with an enormous appetite for pancakes. He formed mountains from the leftover batter and made bacon skates for his much smaller lumberjack friends so they could grease his giant frying pan.

Pancakes also have their own folklore. In Newfoundland, Canada, buttons, coins, rings and even needles were hidden in the batter to reveal a divination for the future. If you were unlucky enough to get a button you were destined to be a poor bachelor. In my 30 minute time allotment, I could not find out what the needles meant and why they used pancakes. It seems to me to be a risky undertaking to be searching for needles in your breakfast. My mom put wrapped pennies in a cake once. My brother dared his friend to eat one and he did. No more divinations at our house at dinner time, never mind in the am.

The world’s biggest pancake ever made was 49 feet wide and weighed 6, 600 pounds. The world’s most expensive pancake at the Radisson Blue Edwardian Hotels 5 star Opus restaurant. The recipe includes pink champagne, lobster, truffles and caviar at a mere $1166.00 per serving.

The late Queen Elizabeth was a bit of a foodie and also loved pancakes. Here is her recipe so that you may try it yourself during your stay at Best B&B in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, Canada

4 teacups of flour

4 tbsp of sugar

2 teacups of milk

2 eggs

2 tsp of baking soda

3 tsp of cream of tartar

2 tbsp melted butter

Instructions from the Queen:

Beat eggs, sugar and half the milk together

Add flour and mix well together

Add the remainder of the milk, baking soda and cream of tartar

Fold in the melted butter

She suggested you use maple syrup or treacle instead of sugar and that mixture needs a great deal of beating and shouldn’t stand about too long before cooking.