When is a Pancake Not a Pancake?

11:19Nicola Twilley:Nikki, you and Ken can agree to disagree here. But as we're touring the international landscape of pancakes, Ken says that you can find them everywhere.

11:27Cynthia Graber:As I'm thinking through the whole world, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a place that doesn't have a kind of pancake.

11:32Nicola Twilley:Some of these pancakes are multi-purpose. They serve as an edible plate and utensils combined. In South India, you get the dosa, which is a huge crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and black lentils, often served rolled up into a cylinder shape with the fillings inside. And in Ethiopia, there's what's called injera. It's large and spongy and flat, and you put all the other food you're going to be eating on top of it.

11:55Cynthia Graber:Well, injera is an enormous pancake cooked on one side, but a lid goes on it. So it sort of steams the top and it gets this lovely, chewy kind of texture. And when it's made of teff, it's brown and it's sour because it's actually fermented naturally. And the texture is lovely. And then you break off pieces of it or you use one of the injera as a sort of scoop. You know, you just take a piece of it and scoop the food up. But that's as good as food gets, I think.

12:27Nicola Twilley:These are big sit-down pancakes, but in some places, pancakes are portable. Breton buckwheat galettes are crepe-style pancakes wrapped around ham and cheese. My personal favorite pancake in the world is a classic Beijing street food breakfast, John Bing. It's a mung bean and wheat crepe with an egg spread on it and lots of fun sauces. And then it's layered with crispy wontons and folded up into a spicy, crunchy, savory, delicious package. Pancakes as street food are hard to find in the U.S.

12:57Cynthia Graber:But elsewhere, it does work. Like a big greer in Morocco is a sort of little pancake. It's only cooked on one side, so it has holes. But you'd find, you know, stacks of them sold, and you'd just walk away with it in your hand.

13:09Nicola Twilley:One winter in Florence, I stumbled across a market, and there was a guy at a stand selling nechi, which are warm chestnut flour pancakes. They're nutty and toasted-tasting, and they were wrapped around some kind of cheese, and it was exactly what I needed on that chilly February day. Ken says the reason pancakes are universal is because they're elementary. They're likely one of the first starch-based dishes humans ever made. People all over the world found that they could get a lot of nutrition from starchy things. And even before we domesticated crops like corn and wheat, we've been foraging as many starches as we could and then boiling them or crushing them to release the nutrients.

13:43Cynthia Graber:So I imagine that the very first kind of pancakes would have been something like, imagine a Native American, and I'll just picture the Yokuts who lived right where I'm sitting now in Central Valley of California, taking acorns, crushing them up in a grinding rock. They took a watertight basket, poured water into it, heated it with hot rocks, put into the basket, and then they would put in the acorn flour, goes into that, and it creates a kind of mush.

14:14Nicola Twilley:This mush is acorn porridge. But looked at another way, it's batter, just ready for the griddle.

14:20Cynthia Graber:And at this point, they take the mush, take it out, throw it onto a hot rock, and it becomes a pancake. You know, it's, you know, it holds together, gets crispy around the edges. And so even before we have pans, I think there's some kind of, obviously this was not prehistoric times, but I think it gives us a sort of hint at how prehistoric hunters and gatherers would have eaten pancakes.

14:44Nicola Twilley:World's first pancake or Prudhoe pancake. But for a dish that likely goes back so far, the pancake is surprisingly elusive in the written record, at least when it comes to actual recipes.

14:55Cynthia Graber:Well, this is really tricky because there are definitely people eating pancakes because they're referred to in literature. And, you know, people will say, cook this as flat as a pancake, assuming the person knows what that is, even though there's no recipe for it. There's things very, very much like pancakes. I mean, the word placunta, which means in Greek, a flat cake, is something like a pancake. There's no recipe. So we don't know whether it's a batter or a dough.

15:21Nicola Twilley:And the reason there's no recipe for these early pancakes is that actually for most of the pancake's history, only poor people were eating them. And cookbooks didn't include poor people food.

15:29Cynthia Graber:If you were wealthy enough, you would have a lot of fat, lard usually or oil, and you wanted your crisp to come out really crunchy. And so if you didn't have a whole lot of money, the last thing you would do is waste the whole pot full of fat. You'd use it for many other things. So I think using very little fat in there gives you the soft pancake that we think of today.

15:51Nicola Twilley:When the first pancake recipes do start showing up in cookbooks in the 1500s, Ken says they're not actually pancakes.

15:58Cynthia Graber:I think there are some very close ones that sort of look like pancakes or called crepes that are made with a bowl that has holes in it. You pour the batter in and that goes into the fat. And you can actually do that in very little fat, but it becomes crispy and much, much more like a funnel cake. And of course, the word crepe comes from crisp, meaning it was originally a kind of funnel cake. It wasn't a pancake at all. Pancakes or not, these definitely sound super tasty. They're usually made with wine, which I think evaporates as the batter hits the fat. And so they are fluffy and really lovely.

16:30Nicola Twilley:Ken says the earliest pancake that's really a pancake is in The Good Huswife's Handmade for the Kitchen. It was published in 1594. You can tell it's floppy and not crispy because of the amount of fat.

16:40Cynthia Graber:Because it says take a lump of butter the size of your finger. You know, that's not a whole lot.

16:45Nicola Twilley:Finally, a pourable batter-based pancake that was just pan-fried rather than deep-fried. Candice tried out a bunch of the earliest pancake recipes, and some are better than others.

16:54Cynthia Graber:There's one also that doesn't work at all, which I found kind of amazing. It has a lot of cream in it and only like three teaspoons of flour, which it just didn't work when I tried to cook it. But the ones that do, the early ones, are very, very eggy. They're somewhere between an omelet and a pancake. And I think British pancakes are still that way. There's still much more egg to flour ratio. And the egginess, of course, is cut. I mean, Americans think of British pancakes. They say, what, you put lemon on it? That makes no sense whatsoever. An American would never in a million years put lemon on a pancake.

17:28Cynthia Graber:It just seems absurd.

17:29Nicola Twilley:This might not be how I would regularly consume pancakes, but I don't know. It still sounds delicious to me. It is delicious. It is not absurd at all. But what is actually kind of weird is that we Brits only really eat these delicious lemon and sugar dusted eggy crepe style pancakes once a year on Pancake Day.

17:48Cynthia Graber:So Pancake Day is Shrove Tuesday.

17:49Nicola Twilley:Neither Pancake Day nor Shrove Tuesday are going to be familiar terms for many listeners. And to be honest, I have always been more on the pancake eating side than the church based Shrove business. But the point is, this is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the official start of Lent in the Christian calendar. And you're apparently supposed to be kind of clearing up the last dregs of carnival and confessing your sins so that you're all ready for the 40 days of grimness ahead.

18:16Cynthia Graber:In most places in Europe, there were fasting regulations which said you were not allowed to eat meat or meat products, which includes eggs and butter and milk and cheese and things like that. for that whole 40-day period leading up to Easter.

18:32Nicola Twilley:And so there are traditions in lots of different countries about how to use up all those eggs and butter and milk. In England, they use those ingredients up in pancakes. But we don't just make and eat those pancakes. We also toss them, we fight for them, and we sometimes even run races while flipping them. The OG pancake race is in a little village in Buckinghamshire called Olney.

18:53Cynthia Graber:The Paris Church of Olney in Buckinghamshire prepares for its big moment of the year, the Shrove Tuesday pancake race. The contest has been held in the village since 1445.

19:05Cynthia Graber:Only village women over 16 are permitted to enter. Pancakes must be tossed three times during the race, and the winner receives a kiss from the verger.

19:12Nicola Twilley:A verger is a member of the clergy, not sure what they're doing handing out kisses. Ken told us the legend that supposedly led to the very first pancake race.

19:21Cynthia Graber:There's a story that the bell rings for everyone to go to church, and this woman is still cooking her pancakes. And she says, I'm not abandoning them on the fire. I'm going to run right to the church and keep flipping my pancakes. So they have a race now to the church steeple with people flipping this pancake. And the idea is whoever gets there first wins. But you have to continually flip as you're running, which is a real trick. And they're off. From the marketplace to the church is 415 yards, a long way to toss a pancake.

19:59Nicola Twilley:Halfway, the pressures begin to tell. The winner collects her check for 25 pounds in the frying pan. Where else? Who says British cuisine is boring? I'm not making that claim, at least not on air. But I must say, I do also like U.S.-style pancakes, possibly even more than British ones, although they are very different. The story of how the pancake became American, coming up after this break.

20:25Cynthia Graber:You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band tees. But on Depop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop. Just snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

20:55Nicola Twilley:Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling. Ross, work your magic.

21:12Nicola Twilley:Hi, I'm Brene Brown.

21:14Cynthia Graber:And I'm Adam Grant.

21:15Nicola Twilley:And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop.

21:17Cynthia Graber:A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning.

21:22Nicola Twilley:It's going to be fun. We rarely agree.

21:25Cynthia Graber:But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning.

21:29Nicola Twilley:That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. We said some of the earliest pancake recipes appeared in the Middle Ages. But the first pancake recipes that really seem more like today's American pancakes come from the Netherlands in the 1600s.

21:48Cynthia Graber:And it may actually be that the Dutch introduced it into, you know, the New Netherlands and New York. So I think that may be that may be a closer connection to where we got our light, fluffy pancakes. And the Dutch love pancakes. I mean, they have pancake houses like we do.

22:02Nicola Twilley:However they got to the U.S., what is clear is that they have long been super popular here. Pancakes star in the very first cookbook written by an American and published in the United States. There are multiple different recipes. There are buckwheat pancakes, and some involve native ingredients like corn.

22:19Cynthia Graber:Early Americans did make them out of different grains. I don't think many Americans would think of a corn pancake or a rye pancake or even a buckwheat pancake, even though that's just as good as it gets as far as I'm concerned. So people, you know, in places where you either couldn't grow flour because of the climate or you didn't have enough money for flour, which is the most expensive of grains, pancakes are something you can make out of absolutely any grains. So a combination of corn and rye was very typical, which is a delicious, delicious combination.

22:49Nicola Twilley:Even though these were more varied than our usual white flour pancakes today, and frankly, these sound tastier to me, too, they were closer to what we eat now. They'd become a recognizably American food.

22:59Cynthia Graber:Well, pancakes become lighter and fluffier and chemically raised. We start throwing things in them like blueberries or chocolate chips or whatever. And, you know, the American, it's a cliche, but I think the whole idea of abundance and choice and big servings, you get a stack of pancakes. I mean, that's a lot to eat.

23:19Nicola Twilley:That heartiness is perhaps why a pancake breakfast became associated with lumberjacks and outdoorsmen and log cabins. They didn't have box mix, but they could carry around a starter.

23:31Cynthia Graber:The idea is that if you're a lumberjack, you carry around your sourdough with you. And that all you need to do is just scoop that out onto the pan and then add a little more flour and it lasts forever. And, you know, we'll be like a sourdough starter. Right. And I assume a lumberjack is out in the middle of nowhere in the forest. as, you know, you just make a quick fire. I don't know how true that is. You know, it's it's it probably comes from literature or popular imagination more than anything.

23:57Nicola Twilley:One name for these early pancakes was flannel cake because of the association with those flannel clad bearded lumberjacks. But pancakes had lots of different names at the time.

24:05Cynthia Graber:Yeah. So there's there's, you know, ho cakes and no cake and flapjack. And and those names are almost meaningless. I mean, And people decide these crazy folk etymologies of them. The hoe cake supposedly was cooked on a hoe, which I actually tried. Of course you did. And I made a fire outside. A hoe goes, you know, has a parallel right angle. So you'd have to hold it directly over the fire, in which case you burn your hands.

24:32Nicola Twilley:Turns out there's more than one kind of hoe.

24:34Cynthia Graber:No, the hoe actually refers to the pan. It's just an old word for pan.

24:38Nicola Twilley:And as Ken said, another word in America for a pancake is a flapjack, which was a little confusing to me when my friend showed up from London and told me she had a flapjack in her purse for if she got hungry.

24:48Cynthia Graber:I was in England this summer, and there's a shop in, I was in Chichester, and it said flapjacks. And I'm thinking, you sell pancakes here? It's not. They're like bars, and it's a totally different thing.

24:59Nicola Twilley:The contemporary British flapjack is a dense, chewy cousin of a granola bar made of rolled oats, butter, and golden syrup. No one seems to know how this term came to mean two such very different things.

25:10Cynthia Graber:No idea. No idea.

25:12Nicola Twilley:Pancakes also became famous in America as one of the very first branded boxed mixes. And you'll likely recognize the name of that very famous brand.

25:21Cynthia Graber:And remember, when you serve Aunt Jemima...

25:23Nicola Twilley:Pancake days is happy days.

25:26Cynthia Graber:Come on, don't go! We wait, don't go! Aunt Jemima emerged as a logo for ready-made pancake mix in 1889 and was used to market it initially by the two men who developed this image.

25:48Nicola Twilley:This is Rache Richardson. She's a professor at Cornell University. The two men Rache is referring to are Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood. Chris was a journalist and Charles was a mill worker, and their story marks a darker turn in the pancake story. They started a new business that year in 1889. They acquired a bankrupt flour mill in Missouri, and they were looking to disrupt the flour business. Neither of them was a cook or a baker, but no matter. At the time, mass-produced packaging in the form of paper bags was new on the scene, and Chris and Charles had the idea of putting wheat flour, corn flour, salt, and a raising agent all together in one of these groovy new bags.

26:25so that anyone wanting a pancake could just add milk and drop the batter on a griddle.

26:30Nicola Twilley:These two guys who couldn't really cook decided to test their new product by having the local librarian over. He was a guy named Perd Ryder. What a name. And when he tried their product, he said they were very tasty flapjacks. But Charles and Chris still needed a name for their new pancake mix. And while he was pondering this, Chris went out to enjoy an evening at the minstrel show. Minstrel shows had already been around for a while at that point.

26:52Cynthia Graber:It spans at least back to the mid-1820s and the legacy of Thomas Daddy Rice, as he was known, who saw an enslaved person doing a dance called Jump Jim Crow. And he noticed that dance and adopted it and performed it. And it was increasingly popularized throughout the 1830s.

27:22Nicola Twilley:By the late 1880s, when Chris wandered in for some entertainment, minstrel shows were everywhere. These were largely white people, white men, performing in blackface and also cross-dressing for the female characters. There was lots of singing and dancing.

27:35Cynthia Graber:And so initially, these performances appeared on stage and theater and were very much at the heart of American entertainment. and also the source for disseminating stereotypes of people of African descent that were very pernicious.

27:54Nicola Twilley:One of the songs Chris Rutt heard, a super popular song originally written by a Black musician called Bill Kersands, was the Aunt Jemima song. We don't have any recordings from the time, but here's a modern version.

28:14Nicola Twilley:According to researchers, Karsans based his tune on a traditional field song in the South called Promises of Freedom. And the lyrics include a mistress who says she'll free her slaves when she dies, including Aunt Jemima, but then she lives forever. That's maybe why the song in particular was popular with both the white and black communities at the time. And Chris Rutt liked the name Aunt Jemima, and he liked the minstrel show character it was referring to even more.

28:38Cynthia Graber:In the 19th century, there were these images that emerged, again, within plantation culture, and particularly within the plantation myth. So that the Black woman, for instance, was frequently represented as a mammy. And so the mammy figure, for instance, in terms of her physical appearance, was typically represented as being plump. She was the epitome of the so-called happy slave, delighted to serve the master class, her master and mistress, and to take care of their children.

29:13Nicola Twilley:Remember, this was all taking place after the Civil War had ended and slavery was officially over. But a lot of white Americans still had a nostalgia for the plantation days, and the mammy figure was beloved.

29:23Cynthia Graber:I think in part because it was a familiar image and it fed into the culture where narratives of the past and enslavement in particular were premised on nostalgia and romance. And so this image was the epitome of that nostalgia. it.

29:49Nicola Twilley:As part of this overall whitewashing of the Old South, plantation culture had come to represent a life of leisure and abundance and good food for white people. And so all of those associations traveled with Aunt Jemima too, which to Chris Rutt made her the perfect image for a pancake brand. Chris and Charles created a new product called Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, but it didn't take off and they went broke. They sold their mill and their brand to another guy in the milling industry named R.T. Davis. He added powdered milk to the mix so you could literally just add water. And at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, he hired a Black woman named Nancy Green.

30:27Cynthia Graber:Who was brought in to literally flip pancakes in a giant flour barrel and proved to be a hit.

30:36Nicola Twilley:Literally, this was a building shaped like a flour barrel where Aunt Jemima slash Nancy Green was serving up pancakes, and in a world's fair filled with fabulous buildings and the world's first Ferris wheel, the flour barrel was it.

30:50Cynthia Graber:And so this began her long-term work as, you know, the human embodiment of Aunt Jemima.

30:59Nicola Twilley:In real life, Nancy Green was a 59-year-old servant who worked for a Chicago judge. She had been born into slavery on a plantation in Kentucky, but she got a whole new fake backstory as Aunt Jemima, courtesy of none other than Perd Wright, the taste-testing librarian. He created advertising copy filled with all sorts of made-up stories about her life with new characters introduced.

31:23Cynthia Graber:You know, where you have this image of Colonel Higbee, based on a plantation in Louisiana, who is delivered time after time because of Aunt Jemima, whose pancake mix kind of saves the day.

31:38Nicola Twilley:In one story that Purd wrote, and remember, all of this is totally made up. There is no Colonel Higby and no real live Aunt Jemima. Anyway, Union soldiers threatened to rip the mustache off Higby's face. But Aunt Jemima offered the soldiers pancakes, and as they were enjoying themselves, Colonel Higby escaped. Pancakes to the rescue. Aunt Jemima, the human-embodied brand, ended up becoming super, super popular. Nancy Green traveled the country playing Aunt Jemima at fairs and festivals. People mailed in and paid actual money for a ragdoll version of Aunt Jemima and her made-up husband and kids.

32:14Nicola Twilley:And her fictional backstory was elaborated in endless ads. There was an Aunt Jemima radio show that lasted from 1923 until the 1950s, and she even was immortalized in an entire pancake restaurant at Disneyland in the 50s. Try the Disneyland sensation, Aunt Jemima Party Pancakes. My, they're good.

32:35Cynthia Graber:And be sure to visit Disneyland.

32:37Nicola Twilley:By this point, Nancy Green was long dead. She died in a car crash in 1923. And here's what's really bizarre. Her obituaries describe her life story as if she was literally Aunt Jemima, a former slave whose pancakes made her famous. The whole Aunt Jemima story is wild. And obviously also, as we've been saying, is based on the racist stereotype of a black woman as first enslaved and then as a servant. One thing that's telling about the ads is that originally there were never any white women in them. That way they could kind of imagine themselves in the household with a black woman working for them.

33:10Cynthia Graber:And I think for Americans, for some Americans post-19th century, they like the idea that a jolly, heavy black woman was serving them food. And obviously that was someone doing labor for you. And the way they sold Aunt Jemima was saying, here, she's in a box.

33:28Nicola Twilley:One book that tells this whole story is just titled Slave in a Box. Long story short, Aunt Jemima came to be synonymous with pancakes for a large swath of America, but there was one group she was never a hit with.

33:41Cynthia Graber:There's been a longstanding critique of Aunt Jemima. This played out over time.

33:46Nicola Twilley:Back in the 1920s and 30s, it was already clear that many African Americans absolutely hated Aunt Jemima. People wrote articles about the brand. They called for a ban of the pancake mix, but unfortunately, none of that ended up putting much of a dent in her popularity. Quaker Oats, which had bought the brand, did eventually change her outfits.

34:05Cynthia Graber:You know, the bandana was ubiquitous, and then, you know, it came off and was replaced by the headband. I graduated from high school in 1989, and so that was literally 100 years after the emergence of the Aunt Jemima logo. And in that year, the significant thing was that the headband came off and Aunt Jemima was depicted wearing pearls. And so this was a more refined image associated with her.

34:38Nicola Twilley:Unsurprisingly, this minor rebrand did not satisfy her critics. Public Enemy named and shamed Aunt Jemima in their 1990 protest song, Burn, Hollywood Burn.

34:53Nicola Twilley:They played Aunt Jemima is the perfect term, even if now she got a perm. Still, Quaker Oats didn't retire the Aunt Jemima label until 2020. It was too valuable as a brand.

35:03Cynthia Graber:There's this sense of the Aunt Jemima pancakes being a kind of comfort food. And it is associated with very positive personal memories for some people. And so I think that that also explains the longstanding adherence to that image.

35:19Nicola Twilley:But finally, after decades of protests and op-eds, including one written by Richer, Quaker Oats put Aunt Jemima out of her misery. After a racial awakening, Aunt Jemima is getting a new name. Quaker Oats said the breakfast food brand will be renamed Pearl Milling Company and will launch in June. Long overdue. But before Aunt Jemima was permanently retired, she sold not only pancake mix, but pancake syrup, too. And that leads to the question, what even is pancake syrup? The answer after the break.

35:52Cynthia Graber:For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox.

36:30Nicola Twilley:The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive.

36:37Cynthia Graber:You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

37:06Nicola Twilley:We've already established that British people put lemon on their pancakes. But here in the United States, other toppings reign supreme, usually sweet ones. My mom always had peanut butter and brown sugar. She was not a syrup person. And I did not like that kind of intense combination. But I do love the weird little crunch that brown sugar does on top of a pancake. Just a little extra, you know, more sugar on top of sugar. My dad didn't like anything on his pancakes. So I think that's also a little bit of an anomaly, especially in America. you know, just a dry pancake, he occasionally would put blueberries on top, which seemed to be just like a dangerous, or not dangerous, but it seemed to be a very tricky thing to eat with blueberries running about.

37:51Nicola Twilley:I agree with Casey that peanut butter on pancakes is not a typical choice and blueberries on top of pancakes is all wrong. They're supposed to go in the pancakes if you have them at all. A topping is supposed to be a liquid, really a syrup. So I'm a, I am still to this day, my go-to combo is syrup with a sprinkle of brown sugar. And this syrup is called, in a very self-explanatory sort of way, pancake syrup. As a kid, pancake syrup was a staple in Casey's home for topping pancakes and more. Pancake syrup, also sometimes called table syrup, was used to pour on all sorts of things, biscuits, all sorts of breakfast baked goods, but it was some kind of artificial sugar syrup, most likely high fructose corn syrup or corn syrup.

38:36Nicola Twilley:It had some kind of artificial coloring like caramel, the artificial, you know, caramel coloring that you find in so many products like sodas and stuff today. And then it would have had some other kind of natural flavorings, including some kind of maple, artificial maple imitation maple flavoring. When Casey was growing up, she had nothing to compare it to. She didn't know if the artificial maple tasted anything like the real thing. We never had maple syrup. I don't think I had maple syrup growing up until I was at least in high school, maybe college. Gather round kids, we're going back to the dark days of Maya and Casey's youth when maple syrup was really expensive.

39:12Nicola Twilley:I hear you, it's not cheap today, but it is so much cheaper than it was. For me, growing up in England, it was super extra expensive because we don't have the right kind of tree and we had to import it. But even here, when I was a kid, it was really expensive and we only had the fake stuff in the fridge. We have a whole Gastropod episode on maple syrup, and you should check it out. But the short history is that two things eventually made maple cheaper. Technology improved to get the sap out, and also Canada broke up their maple cartel. The democratization of access to maple syrup has broadened wildly beyond my wildest dreams as a child.

39:47Nicola Twilley:Even so, maple syrup still feels precious to Casey. When her kids pour it onto their pancakes too generously, she can't help but feel the pain. You know, I find myself wanting to like dip things in their plates afterwards because it feels so wasteful. Even back when maple was really expensive, it was still more common in New England and other regions where, you know, there were maple trees. In the South, they traditionally used sorghum syrup. Sorghum can be not off-putting, but it is very distinct. It has a very kind of earthy flavor. This regional preference for sorghum dates back at least to the Civil War when there were blockades and the South ended up relying on sorghum as a sugar substitute.

40:25Nicola Twilley:They had a bunch of different substitutes. It was not the only one, but it was one that was readily available. And sorghum still grows readily in a lot of pockets of the South. And it's not native to the South, but it's an ancient grain that's actually from Africa, and it's theorized that it was brought over to actually feed enslaved peoples. Other than sorghum syrup, the other topping they used throughout the South was something called K-Rose syrup.

40:46Cynthia Graber:I've been eating K-Rose syrup ever since I was no higher than a baseball bat. Pour on plenty of K-Row's syrup, like I do. Nothing flavors a stack of cakes like delicious K-Row. Yes, Mickey Mantle really goes for K-Row's syrup. K-Row's Dextrose Food Energy helps you star on any team.

41:05Nicola Twilley:K-Row was not originally developed to fuel baseball stars. It was launched in 1902 to use up some of the acres and acres and acres of corn waving their golden heads across the Midwest. If you've never had it, it's a very, very thick, it's corn syrup, basically. It is the basic ingredient and at its basic state, clear. It wasn't explicitly for pancakes. It was used in baking. In the South, a lot of us have pecan pie recipes and a lot of our grandmothers have recipes that are taken directly from Cairo marketing materials. Cairo has a few different versions of the syrup today, not just the clear one, but also a dark syrup and a medium colored one called pancake syrup.

41:43Nicola Twilley:Her grandparents always used the clear one, though, on their pancakes. So you'd pour this clear, thick syrup that is thicker than molasses on top of your pancakes and eat them with your eyes closed. Eyes closed, because even as a kid, Casey knew clear syrup was just wrong. For me, I, you know, I wanted to have this beautiful golden color. And we didn't have clear Cairo in my house growing up. This was only at my grandparents. and, you know, my parents at least had the dignity to buy, they treated us well enough to buy artificially colored corn syrup so that it didn't look so weird. Because nonetheless, despite me never having had maple syrup growing up or having it so infrequently that I didn't really know what it was, I knew that pancake syrup was supposed to be a certain color.

42:34Nicola Twilley:Today, in the 21st century, brunch is a lifestyle, high fructose corn syrup is looked down on, and pancakes come with all kinds of trendy toppings. I've seen pancake stacks topped with such things as guava curd and pomegranate molasses. So I think that there's a lot of really cool potential. And I know Food 52 did some fun toppings with like miso butter and different types of like savory toppings. And those are all great, but I don't think those are going to replace like in our souls what we want for pancakes. For Casey, there's literally only one answer to what is supposed to top a pancake. Pancakes, for me, need to have syrup.

43:12Nicola Twilley:And in my house, if we're out of syrup, we're not having pancakes. And we wait until we have more syrup. And that syrup has to be maple. Ken agrees.

43:20Cynthia Graber:Topping has to be real maple syrup. There's nothing else for me, I think. And I usually like to actually dip it on the side. I think if you pour it right on top, it just soaks in and then everything is mushy by the end. So I have a little bowl of maple syrup and I usually eat it with my fingers. I have to admit, ripping off pieces and just dipping it in is pretty great.

43:37Nicola Twilley:I agree with the maple syrup decision. There is no other acceptable topping for an American pancake. But ripping and dipping pancakes with your fingers? Ken, we love you, but you're an animal. Now that we have the topping question answered, there's one final question we were left with. Casey is working on a book about the history of cakes. And so given the name, pan, cake, we were wondering, is a pancake a kind of cake? This feels like the, is it a sandwich question? It feels very loaded. Here at Gastropod, we do specialize in the tough questions. In the course of her research, Casey has spent a lot of time thinking about cake and its meanings.

44:15Nicola Twilley:To her, cakes mean celebration. And so the question of whether pancakes are a cake all comes down to the scale of the celebration. Pancakes, you know, are, I kind of put them in if I had to make a spectrum. There's cupcakes on this other end. Like for a special celebration, maybe for your birthday. And then there's pancakes that are down here that are every morning celebration. And so you have this, it's still a cake, but it's in this like lesser category of cake. So I celebrate every time I get to eat pancakes. Thanks this episode to Casey Highsmith, Ken Albala, and Riche Richardson. We have links to their work on our website, gastropod.com.

44:55Nicola Twilley:Thanks also to our fantastic producer, Claudia Geib. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode. Till then. Do we turn theικ for that? T if it is that good? I really don't know how long if I put this four feet in there.