Brit. Food: Pancakes and Waffles

[gulplum]

I'm not going to quote Pip, because she gave a pretty complete 
picture of current British attitudes to waffles and pancakes, but I'd 
like to offer a little background and other information to complete 
the picture.

Most (though far from all!) British culinary traditions hail from 
Europe and a lot of them haven't really left restaurants, etc. to 
enter daily routines. To be fair, though, over the last few years 
(due in no small part to the preponderance of cookery shows on TV), 
people are getting a little more adventurous at home.

Waffles are one such item. In France and Belgium, they are very 
traditional, and most households in Northern France would have owned 
a waffle iron until the advent of convenience food. There are two 
distinct traditions, though. Apart from what Americans would 
instantly recognise, there is a separate tradition of much smaller, 
thinner items (about half the size of the average palm), eaten like 
biscuits (sorry, cookies). :-)

In France today, every bakery sells waffles, though they're generally 
a little "crunchier" than the American variety, sprinkled with sugar. 
Restaurants on both sides of the Channel serve them as desserts with 
ice cream or drenched in alcohol (Rum or Grand Marnier). 

Further to a recent thread about Christmas traditions, waffles are a 
traditional French kids' treat on New Year's Day. Oh, and a bit of 
trivia: the French for Waffle is "goufre", which also happens to be 
the French word for Gopher (as in the North American rodent). Is 
there a connection? :-)

Potato waffles are an American invention, born from a combination (or 
confrontation!) of the Jewish latke with the waffle iron. They made 
their way to the British isles with other American culinary ideas 
during and after WWII. They've caught on as a frozen convenience food 
and most people wouldn't dream of making them.

In Britain, there are two separate pancake traditions, as Pip said. 
One is the "Scottish" pancake, which is pretty much like the American 
pancake. The other (prevalent) tradition is what Americans call 
crepes, which is justified, because we both (Americans and Brits) got 
them from the French. Why "crepes" became "pancakes" in British 
English is beyond me. I assume that British and American traditions 
regarding crepes remain the same, in that we continue to eat them 
like the French, as a dessert. 

Nevertheless, the French do have a tradition of eating just about 
anything rolled into pancakes and there are restaurants in France 
which have a complete pancake menu (i.e. everything, from your 
starter to your dessert, is served rolled in a crepe rather than with 
pasta or some form of potato). France is, of course, also famous for 
street-side crepe stands, which serve hot crepes and waffles with 
fillings/coverings of your choice (usually, but not necessarily, 
sweet).

Related British traditions which don't seem to have made it over the 
Atlantic are crumpets and muffins (English muffins bear absolutely no 
relation to the North American variety, which is confusing because 
American muffins have made it across the Atlantic within the last 
decade or so). Muffins and crumpets can certainly be part of an 
English Breakfast, topped with just about anything you would normally 
eat with bread (personal favourite: crumpets and Marmite. Yum!). 
Nowadays, though, they tend to be part of Afternoon Tea rather than 
breakfast.

And a note on maple syrup. The maple (tree) is exclusively native to 
North America. There is therefore no tradition of eating maple syrup 
outside North America (due to its non-existence) and wherever it's 
sold it's an imported product, and accordingly quite expensive. The 
concept of drenching anything in this product is pretty much 
unthinkable. 

I think that pretty much covers all the bases (to finish on an 
American idiom) :-)