Pancake: A Global History
Round, thin, and made of starchy batter cooked on a flat surface, it is a food that goes by many names: flapjack, crêpe, and okonomiyaki, to name just a few. The pancake is a treasured food the world over, and now Ken Albala unearths the surprisingly rich history of pancakes and their sizzling goodness.\ Pancake traverses over centuries and civilizations to examine the culinary and cultural importance of pancakes in human history. From the Russian blini to the Ethiopian injera, Albala reveals...
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Round, thin, and made of starchy batter cooked on a flat surface, it is a food that goes by many names: flapjack, crêpe, and okonomiyaki, to name just a few. The pancake is a treasured food the world over, and now Ken Albala unearths the surprisingly rich history of pancakes and their sizzling goodness.Pancake traverses over centuries and civilizations to examine the culinary and cultural importance of pancakes in human history. From the Russian blini to the Ethiopian injera, Albala reveals how pancakes have been a perennial source of sustenance from Greek and Roman eras to the Middle Ages through to the present day. He explores how the pancake has gained symbolic currency in diverse societies as a comfort food, a portable victual for travelers, a celebratory dish, and a breakfast meal. The book also features a number of historic and modern recipes—tracing the first official pancake recipe to a sixteenth-century Dutch cook—and is accompanied by a rich selection of illustrations.Pancake is a witty and erudite history of a well-known favorite and will ensure that the pancake will never be flattened under the shadow of better known foods.
Introduction What is a Pancake? 71 Comfort Food 442 Celebration 633 Street Food 754 Working-class Food 845 Fine Dining 94Recipes 103Select Bibliography 113Websites and Associations 116Photo Acknowledgements 120Index 122
\ The Chronicle Review"Ken Albala has pancake credentials. He writes that during half a decade of graduate schoool, he made a pancake every morning, without exception. In any case, he clearly enjoys tracing the dish's global travels, from the hot stones that might have held the 'ur-pancake' of our Neolithic ancestors through such aspects of pancake history as Shrove Tuesday celebrations, mining and lumberjack camps, and kitschy American pancake houses, never losing track of the pleasures of the flat."--Nina C. Ayoub, The Chronicle Review\ \ \ \ \ \ Globe and Mail - Laura Penny\ "The book is a lark, because Albala has fun taking pancakes very seriously, opening with a persnickety intro disqualifying all sorts of flattish rounds from pancake-hood. He offers exacting instructions about pancake preparation, and holds forth on crepes, latkes, Ethiopian injera, Mediterranean socca, Thai puk moh and North American pancakes in diner, IHOP, frozen, mix, and home-made form."\ \ \ \ Eats.com“Albala perfectly marries [his] occupational penchant for facts with an innate literary style. His personal musings on the definition of the pancake often mirror a one-man, Socratic approach to problem-solving. Though the questions are posed internally, Albala is able to intelligently convey the results of his reflections to his audience, and the reader instantly becomes a willing party to the author's pursuit of the elusive pancake. . . . Albala's authorial voice and style is refreshingly consistent with his batter-born object of desire--light, sweet and immensely satisfying."\ \ \
