Pancake Recipes

Given that I came to the conclusion that there is no food culture in Britain, it follows from that there is no traditional British pancake recipe, and so in order to try and sell the idea of eating more pancakes to people by finding the best and most reliable recipe. I've gathered a few recipes and will test them at some point. 

Tante Marie

Tante Marie is supposedly a famous French cook, although I've never heard of her, not that that's saying much in all honesty. Apparently her recipe is lighter than most recipes, and is supposedly endorsed as the best crepe recipe by by a group of chefs who include Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater and Heston Blumenthal. Given that she's French, I rather hope this isn't the best recipe.

Recipe

200 ml. milk (2/3 cup)

100 ml. water (1/3 cup)

100 g. all-purpose flour (3/4 cup plus 2 tsp)

2 large eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 tsp brandy (optional)

BBC Good Food

I know that both my mum and step-mum use BBC Good Food from time to time when they're cooking, so I'd have thought that there would be a fair amount of reliability in their recipes given that I know two people who repeatedly use this as a source for their cooking.

Recipe

100g plain flour

2 eggs

300ml semi-skimmed milk

1 tbsp sunflower oil or vegetable, plus extra for frying

pinch salt

Delia Smith

With the football-related twist on this project, it seems appropriate to test a Delia Smith recipe. I knew that she used to be the owner of Norwich City Football Club before I even knew she was a chef.

Recipe

110g/4oz plain flour, sifted

pinch of salt

2 eggs

200ml/7fl oz milk mixed with 75ml/3fl oz water

50g/2oz butter

BBC Fluffy American Pancakes

Similar to the earlier BBC recipe, I'd have thought this would be a reliable recipe as well, but it is different in that I'm expecting it to be a bit thicker and sweeter.

Recipe

135g/4¾oz plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 tbsp caster sugar

130ml/4½fl oz milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

2 tbsp melted butter (allowed to cool slightly) or olive oil, plus extra for cooking

Jamie Oliver Breakfast Pancakes

I remember that Jamie Oliver was involved in some sort of controversy with school dinners in Rotherham, a town that I live very near and my dad lives in. I know that a lot of people in Rotherham now hate him, and that he's known for being a bit pretentious with food. 

Recipe

1 cup self-raising flour

1 cup semi-skimmed milk

1 free-range egg

1 pinch sea salt

A few knobs butter

Gordon Ramsay's Scotch Pancakes

The only cooking show I've ever chosen to watch was The F Word, which was a Gordon Ramsay sort of cooking-talk show with Janet Street Porter (who made the program a lot funnier than it would've been otherwise). What with him being Scottish he seems like an appropriate chef to have for a scotch pancake recipe. 

Recipe

150 grams flour

A spoonful of baking powder

A bit of salt

3 eggs

75 ml water

120 ml buttermilk

50 grams of sugar

Pancakes in British Food Culture

To begin with I wanted to ask a few questions that related to the pancake world cup day on Friday. I was interested in a few things. Firstly I wanted to know weather people preferred caramel ice cream to vanilla ice cream, as I was confused as to how one ice cream made it to the final whereas the other was knocked out straight away. The results are below.

The results show a fairly substantial percentage of people prefer caramel to vanilla, so I suppose it makes sense that caramel got further. Because I was unsure, I also asked which country people most associated with ice cream just to check my initial assumption was right, 11 out of 17 also said Italy, so I'm happy that I didn't make a stupid mistake. Further to this I wanted to find out just how popular caramel ice cream is. Of the 17 people that answered the survey, only 2 said caramel, this surely shows just how popular a topping ice cream is for a pancake in general, if it's not even most peoples favourite and yet it still came second. 

When I asked people what their favourite topping was this was confirmed as it was similarly popular to the other classic pancake toppings.

I asked which, if any, of the more obscure pancake toppings that made it past the first round sound appetising to them. None of the toppings sounded appetising to half of the people, which illustrates the point I made in my conclusion, that people are quite happy to assume that some things will be horrible as pancake toppings.

I also asked how often people ate pancakes and why that was, expecting the vast majority to say only once a year for pancake day. The result was pretty skewed towards once a year, with 8 people saying, that, yet 9 people said because of pancake day, which is strange. The only two reasons given for eating them every 3 or 6 months were "my flatmate and grandma make them" and "I'm not a morning person", whereas the weekly person said "I have protein pancakes".























This suggested to me that pancake day wasn't necessarily as big or important a thing in general society as it was in my household growing up, but retrospectively maybe it was because my family is fairly religious, and pancake day comes from the idea of lent. Pancakes were eaten then because it was a good way to use up rich foods such as eggs, milk and sugar before the 40 day fasting period of lent, where Christians had to refrain from eating foods for pleasure, and instead had to eat only basic foods in order to survive.

This made me wonder just how the pancake day tradition compares to other food habits in terms of how it's followed, so I asked people how many times they had a sunday lunch this summer, to see how much that still occurs, I asked if they still eat breakfast every morning, as people seem to be getting busier and busier. The last thing I asked was how often they ate takeaway or fast food, so I could compare that to the sunday dinners. This is important because I feel like when I was younger, the meal I looked forward to the most in the week was Sunday lunch, whereas nowadays I feel like people more value the convenience and lack of washing up that a takeaway offers.

From the answers I was given I worked out that average person 2 sunday dinners a month, whereas they have either 3 or 4 month. This combined with the fact that the average person in my survey reckoned they ate pancakes 5 times a year suggests to me that when it comes food, people don't always take notice of tradition any more. Which suggests to me that pancakes don't have a place in British food culture, basically because I struggle to believe that Britain has a food culture in regular society any more. I just assumed that most people had a Sunday lunch most weeks and hardly ever had fast food, but apparently I was wrong.