Her Pancakes
On this Mothers’ Day (2024), I think of pancakes and how the rituals of food and memories connect many of us to our mothers in ways that we may not even realize. These pancakes are dedicated to my late grandmother. She gave them to us, and for us, they are her.
Pancakes are a ritual. Pouring a haphazard slurry of flour, egg, and milk onto a shimmering skillet of hot butter demands your attention.
Watch them puff and solidify into little crispy-edged, medallions of cake - but don’t walk away! Untended pancakes will turn on you in an instant, burning and sticking and ruining a good morning. They are hot and fast and rely on smells and visual cues to tell us when they are ready. We want crispy edges, but don’t let the butter burn! And if you’re too cautious with the heat, they’ll turn pale and limp on you and dry out. Pancakes operate on their own schedule. Anyone who has made them knows well the requisite test pancake - a tiny, chef’s treat to ensure the correct batter consistency and skillet temperature before the mayhem begins. A second cup of coffee and a helper must be employed to relieve the cook if a break is needed.
Favorite Pancakes
The inefficiency of pancakes, however, compels us to slow down, and drink coffee, and … wait for more pancakes.
Without a giant griddle, only a few pancakes can be made at a time. By their very nature, they break down the barrier between preparing and enjoying a meal. Their delightful smell draws everyone to the stove to hang about and connect as part of the ritual. Since all the cakes aren’t ready simultaneously, everyone eats at different times – but simultaneously participates in the ritual, nonetheless. Breakfast becomes a continuous loop of making and waiting and eating in the kitchen or somewhere in proximity to the stove so that seconds can be easily secured. As the batter heats, tiny bubbles appear and pop, leaving small craters behind them. Patience is required as the cakes solidify. Flip and serve with more butter and maple syrup. By design, pancakes slow us down, and it’s wonderful.
My grandmother didn’t invent these pancakes, but to us (her grandchildren), they are her.
The recipe we use comes from a 1976 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens Encyclopedia of Cooking — a physical, 18-volume set of books my grandmother kept in her library and actively used her entire adult life. There is nothing really that special about a pancake – yet everything is special about them. At home growing up, my parents always used Bisquick or other boxed mixes and we never cooked them together. But with grandma, we measured the flour, the baking powder, the salt, and the sugar; the oil, the milk, the egg. We made them with her and without her … in her house and in our own homes as adults … when we visited her and when we moved away … on vacation, on weekends, and any time we wanted to feel at home. I’ve made them in Louisiana and Chicago and New York and Mississippi. Making them instantly puts me in her kitchen – measuring ingredients and cranking up her electric skillet to precisely 350° F (which removes a bit of the chaos). They are a process that connects each new batch of pancakes to all pancakes that have come before them – and the people and memories that come with them. We make them often. My sister has now re-created the ritual with her own children who love to help mix the batter. It brings me so much joy to keep her memory alive with a kitchen full of people I love and a skillet full of pancakes. All I need is a few pantry staples … and the recipe.
“The recipe is a text that can produce spattering because it was spattering before it was language. Language is only a holding pattern for the recipe - not its origin, nor its terminus. […] There is always more. There is more than has been recorded in the text and there will be more again.”
Having breakfast with grandma at Mother’s in New Orleans, circa 2008, right before I was set to move away to Chicago after having lived with her for six formative years of my adult life. I miss her dearly and owe much of my lifeforce and personality to her generosity and love.
