Classic Pancakes

Pancakes so classic they can be traced back to ancient Greece!

Pancakes, hotcakes, flapjacks- whatever you call them, we can all agree that there is a special magic in this starchy grilled bread. I’m mostly talking about how satisfying it is to sink your teeth into something warm, soft, and sweet. The ancient Greeks knew of this wisdom and wrote about it as early as the 5th century BC.

“…and a pancake hot and shedding morning dew”
- Cratinus, 500 BC.

Crainus was a comedic poet from Athens who lived sometime between 519 BC- c.422 BC. He mostly wrote plays, and a fragment about Greek pancakes was salvaged from his writings. His contemporary, Magnes, who was also an Athenian comedic poet, detailed that these morsels were covered in honey. The Greeks called them “Tagenites”. They were served for breakfast and made from wheat flour, olive oil honey, and curdled milk- not too different from a contemporary buttermilk pancake recipe.

In the late 2nd century AD, a Greek physician named Galen wrote On the Property of Foodstuffs. This text goes into a bit more detail about tagenites and differentiates the Athenian variety from the Asiatic variety. What I find particularly interesting about this is his description of how the Asiatic Greeks cooked the pancake, then immediately removed it and put it into warm honey so that it was saturated. Anyone who is familiar with Greek/ Mediterranean/ SWANA cooking recognizes this from method in dishes like baklava, basbousa, or knafeh to name a few. What I love about all of these recipes is that they share the same core but they vary slightly in method and ingredients.

Below you will find my classic pancake recipe- an evolution of my grandmother’s recipe. I like to make it with sourdough discard, vanilla extract, and whatever fruits, nuts, and syrups I have around the house at the moment. I hope you enjoy this recipe and continue to adapt it to your tastes and preferences. Please feel free to leave questions, comments, and thoughts- especially if you try the recipe!