Zarpaulus

Writer of sci-fi and horror

Underemployed biologist and creator of the Para-Imperium setting. Currently writing the webcomic "Joanna: Ghost Hunter."


mynotaurus
@mynotaurus

im still not over americans not knowing what a flapjack is btw


dzamie
@dzamie

don't you dare tell me that thing is what you call a flapjack. rather than using the word as an alternative to pancake


quwyou
@quwyou
british people really be out here saying shit like "learn what this is and then we'll talk" and you scroll down only to find the most unapealing thing you've ever seen. like at least we're eating *food*, not whatever that is

dzamie
@dzamie

It always kinda sucks to rag too hard on stuff that originated as poverty food, but from what I've read, it seems that American flapjacks are descended from British ones (we just learned to mill our grains better, I guess), and that just means England has had longer than us to improve on it and hasn't really risen to the occasion.


quwyou
@quwyou
ok it being poverty food makes sense actually. comment retracted. although you cannot deny that the british just have shit food sometimes

mynotaurus
@mynotaurus

what counts as good american food btw cause every example i can zhink of is food zhat existed before america, got hyperoptimized and processed by capitalism and zhen culturally re-exported lol

like i know yall have some. but your cultural footprint in zhe UK is Not Zhat so i dont know it lol



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in reply to @mynotaurus's post:

Ah. I grew up with squashed fly biscuits, which horrified most of my friends. Flapjacks as bars is new to me. They aren't in any of the books I've read. I wonder if they're new, last hundred years, or if I have just been reading the wrong books.

in reply to @mynotaurus's post:

Before 1935 there was a similar food that wasn't a pancake (calling pancakes flap jacks started only in the 1920s in the USA and never in the UK.) but more like a sweet corn bread but shortages in Europe of cornmeal made people change to oats. There's some evidence of the corn, treacle and butter version from at least the 1800s if not earlier, in both countries.

so, everything I'm seeing says that flapjack meant either pancake or a kind of apple tart in the UK, and only really meant "pancake" in the USA and its preceding English colonies. so I may need to see where you're sourcing this from. like, the use of "flapjack" for a pancake or tart dates back to the late 1500s, not 1920. this pre-dates the earliest English colony in North America.

in fact, the reason why the split you're talking about might've happened, with a thing made of cornmeal, is that among the earliest recipes for pancakes written down in English here, in 1796, was a recipe for something called a (groaning at bad old terms here) "Indian slapjack" which was made with cornmeal instead of more familiar European grains. slapjack is just another variant on the term shape of "flapjack".

That makes more sense than what I could find. I was trying to source from multiple cookbooks sharing the recipies, and might be down to the pancake split where we don't think of some things as pancakes in the uk, that the US thinks are pancakes?

... is this where I find out, after my half-joking after actual research posting, that y'all in the UK would look at an American flapjack and go "that's too thick to be a pancake, I don't know what this is?" because they are big fluffy things with the consistency of a corn bread, typically. our spread of what we consider a pancake goes very thick to fairly thin, as long as it's not like, a crepe

ehehe, don't worry, I wasn't remotely serious about any fightin', with the first post here especially. also I kinda want to try one of these oat things sometime, but I have no idea how to unless I find someone who can cook 'em

in reply to @quwyou's post:

in reply to @mynotaurus's post:

Some fun answers!

  1. American BBQ. Established enough that there are multiple regional versions, prioritizing different kinds and cuts of meat, and the use of different bases for sauce. Kansas City-style is the one most people worldwide would think of.

  2. Cajun/Creole. This could only exist on the coast of Louisiana, a collision of French, Black, and Indigenous culinary tastes and techniques. Jambalaya and gumbo are prime examples. Plenty of heat and deep frying, too.

  3. Fusion cuisines. Tex-Mex (chili is uniquely American!), Chinese-American, California-style, etc. It's silly to argue they're not "authentic" cuisines, just because they're new and a remix of imported foods, unless you're willing to argue that tomatoes and noodles have no place in Italian cuisine. They're unique and authentic unto themselves, and very few people would mistake them for their mother dishes.

  4. The hot dog and pizza. Yes, they're fundamentally German and Italian in origin, respectively. But have you seen how fucked up [praising] the US has made them? British curry comes from Indian curry, nobody would argue that, but it's still undeniably its Own Thing.

  5. Salad! The United States gave us the Waldorf, Caesar, and Cobb! They're great! There's probably others I'm forgetting!

  6. A bunch of shit I can't comment on in detail. Southern soul food (close ties to both American BBQ and Cajun!) Seafood-heavy northeastern dishes (lobster rolls!). All the weird boring-but-not-boring things they eat in the midwest (hot dish!).