Crêpe

• 1. The Coin and the Pan

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  The crêpe, a thin French pancake that cooks in seconds on a hot pan, comes with a ritual that has little to do with eating. In France, a cook may hold a gold coin in the left hand while flipping the crêpe with the right. If the flip succeeds, the coin is said to bring a year of wealth. Other versions promise a year of good weather instead.

  Yet the batter itself is plain, and it runs almost like a liquid. So how did something so simple gather superstitions, a papal legend and a place on menus from Brittany to Tokyo? Why do cooks in Russia, Mexico, Ethiopia and the Philippines each have a cousin of their own? And what turns a few ladles of batter into a cake of many layers?

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• 2. Candlemas Luck

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  On the 2nd of February, the Christian feast of La Chandeleur, also called Candlemas, French kitchens fill with the smell of frying batter. Tradition traces the habit to the year 472. In that year Pope Gelasius I is said to have offered crêpes as sacramental bread to French pilgrims who were visiting Rome for the feast. Crêpes then took the place of the sacramental bread in France. The day became known as Le Jour des Crêpes, or The Day of the Crêpes.

  Many people also treat the day as the turning point from winter to spring, much like Groundhog Day in North America. The golden colour and round shape of the crêpe stand for the sun and the circle of life.

  A second set of customs surrounds the cooking itself. One version has the cook set a gold coin on top of the crêpe while it fries. Some cooks hide the very first crêpe in a drawer instead of eating it, hoping for good luck in the coming year.

  Sharing crêpes with other people on Candlemas follows yet another tradition, that of popes giving food to the poor every year on the 2nd of February.

  A French rhyme sums up the custom: "manger des crêpes à la chandeleur apporte un an de bonheur." It means that eating crêpes on Candlemas brings a year of happiness. Anyone chasing that year needs only a pan and a batter, and the batter is simpler than the legends around it.

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• 3. Batter and Pan

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  The word crêpe comes from the Latin crispa, the feminine form of crispus, which meant curled, wrinkled, or having curly hair.

  The standard French recipe calls for flour, eggs, milk, salt and butter. Sugar is optional. In industrial production, the dry ingredients are first mixed with eggs to make a dough. The remaining wet ingredients then thin it until it spreads with ease.

  The defining trait of the batter is its liquidity, which lets it flow out into a very thin layer. A cook adds one ladle at a time to a hot, greased pan and cooks it until golden. Then comes the flip. Each side usually needs only 20-30 seconds.

  Older recipes sometimes used beer or wine in place of milk. Buckwheat flour is also common, and it is the grain behind the Breton galette. That galette belongs to the savoury half of the crêpe family.

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• 4. Sweet and Savoury

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  French menus sort crêpes into two varieties: sweet crêpes, called crêpes sucrées, and savoury galettes, called crêpes salées.

  Sweet crêpes are generally made with wheat flour, known in French as farine de blé. They appear at breakfast or as dessert. Common fillings include hazelnut cocoa spread, preserves, sugar, maple syrup, golden syrup, lemon juice, whipped cream and custard. Sliced soft fruits are another favourite.

  Savoury crêpes can be made with non-wheat flours such as buckwheat. A buckwheat batter is gluten-free, so people with a wheat allergy or gluten intolerance can eat it. Cooks who prefer wheat can use the usual recipe and simply leave out the sugar. Fillings include cheese, ham and eggs, ratatouille, mushrooms, and in certain regions, artichoke.

  Cooks usually place the filling in the centre and fold the edges partway over it.

  A crêperie is a place built around all this. It may be a takeaway stall serving fast food, or a formal sit-down restaurant or café. Crêperies can be found throughout France, especially in Brittany, and in many other countries. Many also serve apple cider, a popular drink to go with crêpes.

  Some crêpes leave the plain pan behind, whether by catching fire at the table or by stacking into towers.

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• 5. Stacks and Flames

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  The crêpe Suzette, a standard dish in France and Belgium, carries lightly grated orange peel and a liqueur, usually Grand Marnier. The liqueur is set alight when the dish is presented.

  Across the Atlantic, the 49er flapjack is a sourdough crêpe that took its name from the California Gold Rush, when this style of pancake was popular. It resembles a Swedish pancake, so it is sometimes served with lingonberry sauce. More often it is rolled up with butter and powdered sugar, or served open-faced under maple syrup.

  Back in France, the crêpe dentelle is a crisp biscuit made from a very thin layer of crêpe. It is folded into a cigar shape and then baked. People usually eat it with a hot drink during the goûter, the French afternoon snack.

  The tallest creation is the crêpe cake, known in French as mille crêpes. Mille means a thousand, a nod to the many layers. A cake usually holds 15-30 very thin, soft crêpes, with filling spread between them. Fruit, chocolate, cookies and marshmallow all appear. Most are sweet desserts, and some replace the traditional birthday cake.

  A related name is gâteau de crêpes. The Japanese form is a French-sounding word that blends crêpes with mille-feuille. Emy Wada, a pâtissière who had studied in France, popularised the cake in the 1980s through her Paper Moon Cake Boutiques in Japan.

  In 2001 she expanded to New York City. There the company Lady M supplied her crêpe cakes to the popular chains Dean & DeLuca and Takashimaya.

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• 6. Harajuku and Beyond

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  In 1977, Mizuki Ono opened a crêpe shop in the Harajuku district of Japan. French crêpes had reached Japan in the 1970s, but they came spread only with jam and sold poorly. Ono took inspiration from ice cream monaka and filled hers with ice cream, whipped cream and sliced fruit. That version became very popular.

  Japanese crêpes grew into something different from the French original. They were rarely made at home. People bought them as sweets from street stalls and ate them on the street. The style later spread beyond Japan, and it is often called Harajuku Crêpes.

  Malaysia has also long enjoyed crêpes. Small stands there sell sweet and savoury varieties, and they are usually called crêperies.

  In Mexico, crêpes are known as crepas. The French introduced them during the 19th century. A cook may fill them with cajeta, which is similar to dulce de leche, for a sweet dessert. For a savoury dish, the filling is huitlacoche, or corn smut, which is considered a delicacy.

  In Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, the name is panqueques, and they are often eaten with dulce de leche.

  In the United States, French dishes such as crêpes, soufflés and quiche slowly made their way into restaurants. Franchises there mostly keep to the traditional French method, yet they add their own types, such as the hamburger crêpe and the pizza crêpe.

  In French-speaking regions of Canada, crêpes and galettes have long been traditional foods, with no import needed at all.

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• 7. Europe's Many Pancakes

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  In the Spanish region of Galicia, the local version is the filloa, and it may be made with pork blood instead of milk. Galicia and Asturias both traditionally serve these pancakes at carnivals. In Asturias they are called fayueles or frixuelos. In Turkey the name is akıtma.

  The Nordic languages each have their own word. Norwegian says pannekake, and Danish says pandekager, which means pancakes. Icelandic says pönnukaka. In Sweden a crêpe is a pannkaka in the south and plättar in the north. Finnish offers ohukainen, lettu, lätty and räiskäle.

  In most German regions, the word Crêpes refers to a wide, flat pancake. That sets it apart from the smaller and thicker native Pfannkuchen. Dutch speakers say pannenkoek or flensje, and Greeks say krepa. In Afrikaans the word is pannekoek, usually served with cinnamon and sugar.

  In areas of central Europe that once belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire, a thin pancake similar to a crêpe goes by names such as Palatschinken, palacsinta and palačinka. In the Balkans, palačinka may come with fruit jam, quark cheese, sugar, honey or the hazelnut-chocolate cream Nutella. A breaded variant is mostly filled with meat. Restaurants specialising in them are called Palačinkara. Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine has a similar dish, the blintz.

  The Oxford English Dictionary traces the German and Slavic words to the Hungarian palacsinta. It derives that from the Romanian plăcintă, which comes from the classical Latin placenta, meaning small flat cake. The Romanian plăcintă is actually closer to a pie, and Romanian crêpes are called clătită.

  In Russia, blini are eaten during Maslenitsa, also called Cheesefare Week, a festival with a history reaching back to the early Middle Ages. Because blini are made from butter, eggs and milk, the Eastern Orthodox Church allows them during the celebration. Cooks may swap white flour for buckwheat and milk for kefir. Toppings include caviar, cheese, meat, potatoes, mushrooms, honey and berry jam. Many cooks finish the plate with a dollop of sour cream.

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• 8. Distant Cousins

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  In Southern India, the dosa is made from a fermented rice batter and often comes with savoury fillings. Western India has a gram flour dish called pudlaa or poodla, whose batter contains vegetables and spices. Another variety, patibola, is sweet thanks to milk, jaggery or sugar. An Indian crêpe uses a multi-grain flour called bhajanee, along with eggs, curd and spices. It is a modern variation of an older dish called Thalipeeth.

  In Ethiopian, Eritrean, Somali and Yemeni cuisine, injera is often described as a thick crêpe. In Somalia, malawah is very similar to a crêpe and is mostly eaten at breakfast.

  In China, jianbing is a traditional street food hailed as "one of China's most popular street breakfasts." It layers a wheat and grain crepe with an egg, deep-fried crackers known as Bao Cui, chopped scallions and coriander. A mixture of chilli and soybean paste usually goes on top.

  Indonesia has kue leker, a type of crêpe, and ledre, a rolled banana crêpe from Bojonegoro.

  In the Philippines, the native recipe is the daral, made from a batter of ground glutinous rice and coconut milk called galapong. It is rolled into a cylinder and filled with strips of sweetened coconut meat called hinti.

  In Taiwan, danbing is a traditional breakfast. Cooks knead cornstarch and sweet potato flour with water into a thin dough and bake an omelet on top. Breakfast shops, restaurants and night market stalls all sell it. Supermarkets sell the dough frozen in plastic packaging, and the egg is added as the dough is heated.

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