Pancakes a Favorite for 9,000 Years

Call them pancakes, griddle cakes, or flapjacks; this mixture of flour, milk, eggs, and oil has been a pipping hot, mouthwatering favorite since the first days of farming. The mixture is a tasty way to utilize the resources generated by farming. Archaeological evidence proves we humans have been eating pancakes right from the beginning of farming 9,000 years ago.

The word flapjacks may conjure up an image of a chuckwagon and cowboys breakfasting, on a summer prairie morning with cows lowing in the background, in your imagination, but you would be wrong. Flapjacks are a name first applied to griddle cakes in Tudor times. Shakespeare mentions them in his plays. The Greeks ate pancakes they called tiganites over 2,600 years ago. Nearly every culture has a similar recipe. The pancakes spread along with farming.