h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i suspect they are the same.

Me too, but I'd still like to hear what a skimming stone is.

It's a stone that you throw to skim across water. Small, round, flat and sits nicely in your palm.

I heard one on the radio, but I've forgotten what it is. I remember. It's to do with flapjacks. Ours are oatmealy biscuits but the Americans have a sort of savoury sausage thing. Am I right?

i thought they were pancakes

Pancakes are floury and have no oats. Do american pancakes have sausages? Euck!

we have pigs-in-blankets which is sausages wrapped in pancakes...

I think I got the whole pancake thing straight when I was in Canada:
The thin pancakes that you can roll up are called crêpes in America and the thicker ones are called either pancakes or flapjacks (I think - there may be a difference between pancakes and flapjacks).

In UK the pancake scene is complicated.

In England pancakes are made of thin batter in a frying pan shaped skillet about 8-12 inches across. They are about a sixteenth of an inch thick and should be slippery in the pan capable of being flipped over so that the pancake flies a foot or so in the air to be caught up side down to cook the other side. On Shrove Tuesday groups have races of 100 yards or so where the winner gets quickest to the other end with the tossed pancake intact and not splattered on the ground. If still edible then lemon juice and butter or syrup (? Canadian influence) is dolloped on.

The more douce Scot has a thicker batter and a 2-3 inch pancake (English "dropped scone") dropped onto a heavy thick pan and some 1/2 inch thick. It is turned over after one side is cooked with a fish slice or the like. It's eaten hot with butter and jam. We call English pancakes crumpets or crepes.

Scots ones are best. So there

I don't know if Welsh or Irish ones differ from the English pattern.

Now I'm hungry for breakfast ... at 8 at night ...

So English and Americans have different meanings for pancakes, crepes and flapjacks. Just when you thought things were complicated enough....

Scotch Pancakes I call the small thick ones.

If no one objects or knows of it having been done already, I'd like to go through this thread, and make a casual entry for it

A1313984

I've made a start on an entry - if anyone objects, please please let me know before I get too enthusiastic about it. I will also try to reference all the contributing researchers at some point.

No-one objects, we've been trying to persuade some-one to do it for ages. Then you come along all nonchalent-like and do it out of the goodness of your heart. A round of applause for that lady.

Another round of for making the list. It's very good.

Thank you so much Nyssa!
I'm soooo glad somebody finally did this - you're a real sweetheart!




About the pancakes/flapjacks thing up there at the top of the page...

I've always heard the US word pancakes used interchangably with flapjacks. They are decidedly much thicker than crepes. (Crepes are very thin.)

I've seen pancakes/flapjacks made plate sized, or as small as a silver dollar (ok, about 1-1/2 or 2 inches... about 3 - 5 cm), in which case they're called Silver Dollar pancakes. They are generally served with some kind of sweet topping, traditionally maple syrup, but could be molasses or even a blueberry or other fruited syrup. Sometimes pancakes have bits of fruit (such as blueberries or raisins) in the batter, but I've never personally seen them made using sausage. Sausage or bacon may be served on the side, though.


Which reminds me... from what I understand, UK waffles are different from US waffles too. In the US, they are made from a batter similar to the pancake batter, on a "waffle iron". We eat them the same way we eat pancakes - with syrup, but with the extra added attraction that the little pits in the waffle will hold the syrup, instead of allowing it running off all over the plate.

From what I understand, UK waffles always have potato in them, or perhaps they're made entirely from potatoes?

Potato and egg in a lattice shape.

Waffles are not a standard UK foodstuff. Well certianly I had never heard of them when I was growing up. My first experience of the word I think came from the Charlie Brown cartoons and I had no idea what they were.

Some years later I saw that waffles - as in the lattice thing - were on sale bagged up and frozen and were made of potato as Kerr has said. I suspect that this was a marketing thing by a frozen potato products company to cash in on a word that is only tangentially known in UK English.

But hey, I might be well wrong on that. I mean it's not as if we stick to standard definitions of a product here in the UK. Fr'istnace I know that there are at least three different dishes all called 'fishcakes' in the UK depending upon where you live