What's the difference between a crepe and an "English pancake"? They look the same to me.
There are some very minor differences in the way that they're cooked, but the only meaningful difference is that crêpe is a French word and pancake is an English one.
Well, maybe, let's see:
Here are the classical French crêpes:
On the second picture, it's the most classical way to eat it once you've put something in it, or you can just roll it, but it's less convenient.
Crêpes are at least 20 cm diameter (and it can go to about 40 when you have the good material for it) and are totally thin.
I don't know whether French crêpes and English pancakes are that close, there might as well be an eventual 'Old world'/'New world' divide about that, but, the 4 € bloody pancakes I saw in Monoprix were only 10 cm diameter and quite thicker than our crepes, they are not called 'English pancakes', but well, seems that's what they mean:
Well, they call it 'petites crêpes' too
.
And I wonder why we have such clichés about pancakes, overall connected to Canada, maybe due to the fact that the main connection we have with North America is Québec, which also are a big producer of mapple syrup, thus they might overall eat it this way there.
And to think that at one point we were majoritary in a big part of Canada, might eventually come from that epoch too...
Heck, we also had 1/3 of the current US territory and we sold it to finance our bloody wars against those bloody Germans on the continent, while British only had to manage their little island in Europe...
Gosh, if ever we had kept all of this, everybody would be speaking my mother language, we'd be all working in public function or nationalized companies, the whole world would also be directly directed from Paris, and overall, we would all be eating some bloody...
CREPES!
If ever someone knows when and where pancakes appeared, whether it was before the 'New World' or not...
I don't know for crêpes personally, but a lot of sweetened things appeared after we enjoyed all that new 'cheap' sugar from all over the world (and maybe 'pans' aren't that old either, dunno)...
And to be complete with that matter, you also have the
crêpes/galettes bretonnes...
Those are inherently bigger than classical French crêpes and would also be inherently eaten with salty things, while the classical French ones are almost inherently eaten with sweet things.
The almost only way to find French crêpes with salty stuffs is that:
...sexy isn't it?
It's almost something you never do at home but alsmost only buys, and 80% of the time frozen in supermarkets I'd say. Remained quite popular but it's also quite associated to an image of 'lazy ready made not great quality but whatever' food.
Bretonnes crêpes/galettes are, on the other hand, almost inherently something you have in stuffs like food trucks or Breton restaurants, you can also eat them with more different salty stuffs than the preceding ones, which only vary between ham/cheese/béchamel/mushrooms.
They are about 30-40 cm diameter, slightly less thin than French ones, and inherently with buckwheat floor (otherwise they are not Breton but French
, which are with wheat floor), they also have a far more decent and appealing look than the rolled French salty ones, enjoy yourself:
(I haven't even found some good enough pics)
And to finish with that giant sandwich of pancakes/crêpes/galettes, you have to pay attention to not mix the latter galettes bretonnes with those...
...which have the same name.
A lot of different things can be called galette in French, but enough now, there gonna be an indigestion otherwise.
(Gosh, I wouldn't have expected I was engaging myself into a thesis about 'flat food in the Western world'...)
Oh and by the way...
'pancake' just means a cake cooked in a pan
Guess what?
Before your post I don't think that I had ever realized this:
Pancakes...pancakes...pancakes...pan-cakes...pan cakes...pan cakes!!
Some bloody f**king cakes made with a bloody f**king pan!!
Well, thanks.
Oh and, while we are with Canada, the 'New World', and my pan-cake discovery.
A short time after this genius flash into my mind, there's been a TV documentary about beavers on arte, that French-German TV.
Guess what again?
On arte, what's written on the screen, such as who people are under their name, is written in both French and German, and at one point they interviewed a trapper (in Argentina, where beavers make problems), French kinda 'frenchized' the English word 'trapper' and it gaves 'trappeur', what we often do with English words like that, but Germans, as often too, apparently kept the English word 'Trapper'...
And then my mind enterred into this crazy mechanism again and made me realize something I don't think I had realized before either...
Trappeur...Trapper...trapper...
trapper!
A guy who make some bloody f**king traps!
You might have opened a new world full of new possibilities to me!
Well, thanks.
(interesting, isn't it?)
But, let's be back on pancakes/crêpes.
And, on pacakes I don't know, but on crêpes what I'd personally gladly put is a fine
confiture (jam) of
mûres (mulberries) or some
compote (stewed fruit) of apple, pear, peach, or plum, with eventually a thin ray of red fruits syrup over the compote.
And, if your crêpes are still hot some melting butter with a little bit of sugar, would be
perfect.
Let's avoid insane stuffs such as Nutella and the like (though over popular in France, especially with crêpes...).
breakfast foods like sausage, bacon, biscuts and gravy, bagels with lox and cream cheese, scrambled eggs w/ salsa, any omelet under the sun, and even crepes.
There really is a misunderstanding about breakfast food between France, and, well, maybe the rest of the world...
Ironically that's us who call it
petit-déjeuner (literally 'small-lunch') while we overall eat it sweet and it's not that big, even traditionally I'd say, and you call it break
fast (and why not fast-break?) while it'd be far more salty and copious than us, which would precisely be like a...small lunch
.