When: February 25
National Pancake Day on February 25 celebrates the breakfast classic that predates written history — a batter-and-heat combination that appears in nearly every food culture on earth.
Pancakes are 30,000 years old. The leavening that makes American pancakes fluffy is 200 years old. The gap between those two things explains everything.
Pancakes are among the oldest prepared foods in the archaeological record. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps, had einkorn wheat in his stomach — evidence of flatbreads cooked on hot stones. Ancient Greek and Roman texts describe pancakes sweetened with honey. The dish appears across virtually every grain-growing culture on earth, from Ethiopian injera to Vietnamese bánh xèo to Russian blini to Scottish oatcakes — thin batter cooked on a hot surface is one of the fundamental applications of grain into food. What makes the American pancake distinct is baking powder. Chemical leavening — baking soda reacting with acid, or baking powder releasing carbon dioxide on contact with heat — was developed in the early 19th century and transformed the pancake from a flat, dense disc into something airy and thick. The fluffy American short stack, stacked three inches high and eaten with butter melting into the layers, is a specifically American invention, a product of...