It's None Of Your 'Pancake' Business!

Germans, the ethnic group, not just the nationality, fix all sorts of pancakes. In the south, they are typically called "Schmarren,"* of which there are numerous variations, with the most famous being "Kaiserschmarren" ("Emperor's Pancakes"), and the "e" in the "en" is often dropped, leaving "Schmarrn." Over thirty years ago I developed a love for "Kaiserschmarren," and that love continues to this day. Not far from the main train station (the "Hauptbahnhof") in Frankfurt, Germany was a "Wienerwald" Restaurant (Wienerwald="Vienna Woods").** This was a chain of restaurants (casual attire) started in the 1950s in Munich, if I remember right. Their specialty was chicken, both "Grillhendl" (roast/rotisserie chicken) and "Backhendl" (fried chicken), and they were excellent. As the name implies, they had a "Viennese theme," and one of the desserts was "Kaiserschmarren," a specialty of Vienna ("Wien" in German). These are pancakes made with flour, eggs, milk, sugar, raisins (usually golden), and cinnamon. Naturally, everyone has their own recipe, but many also fold in beaten egg whites to lighten the pancakes. The batter is poured into a frying pan with melted butter, and once set, it is torn with two forks, or cut, into bite size pieces. The finished product is then dusted with powdered sugar and often accompanied by plum sauce (like plum preserves or stewed plums), as they were in Frankfurt, although other fruit preserves are used too. I make them frequently, but I skip the beaten egg white step. I also skip the dusting of powdered sugar, instead mixing powdered sugar with some melted butter and a splash of evaporated milk to make an icing like drizzle to top the Schmarren. I once even added some "Kirschwasser" (cherry brandy) to the drizzle instead of milk. It was good, and I decided to have another shot, ah, I mean serving; after which, I didn't care if I hadn't put the egg whites in anyway.

I decided upon the title of this article, because German uses an expression with the word "Schmarren" in it, which is really a bit strong: "Das geht Sie einen Schmarren an," the true meaning of which is, "That's none of your damned business." So, as you can see, my title loses something in the translation. "Schmarren" can also mean "nonsense" or "rubbish" in every day spoken German (colloquial German, or in Gerrman, "Umgangssprache").   

In northwestern Germany, buckwheat pancakes are common and there are various terms, all in Low German, like "Bookweetenschubber," or "Bookweetpannekoke." They are made with buckwheat flour, eggs, milk, a little salt, and some sugar. Now, there are many variations on this recipe, as in some parts they use yeast, in other parts they add nutmeg (or mace) and pepper. Up on the North Sea coast they replace the milk with tea,*** and bacon is added to the batter. In the general vicinity of Dortmund, slices of bacon are fried first and the batter poured over them in the pan, and even currants can be added, but the main thing here is, the liquid used is neither milk nor tea, but coffee! All sorts of fruit preserves, compotes, and syrups accompany the buckwheat pancakes.  

* The standard German word for "pancake" is "Pfannkuchen," and besides the term "Schmarren," mainly used in Bavaria and Austria, there is also "Flädle," used in southwestern Germany (in the general area of Stuttgart, just as a point of reference), where they are even cut up and put into soup. Of course, Germans are famous for all sorts of potato pancakes, and there are oodles of dialect terms for them, so I won't even go there. For the north, see above.

** As English did, German borrowed the word "restaurant" from French, but they pronounce it the French way. For those studying German, it is "das Restaurant."

*** This is the ancestral homeland of English and the Anglo-Saxons, and interestingly, the people there love tea, just as their close relatives in England, but it has more to do with climate, than any "blood" connection, as the weather there can change quickly, as the winds come whipping in from the sea.

WORD HISTORY:
Cake-Now, you might think this word is related to "cook," but it isn't. It goes back to Indo European "ghag/ghog," which simply had the notion of "a spherical object, a clump." Its Old Germanic offspring was "kokon," which by then meant "clump, or small round loaf of bread," which shows the word's connection to its original "spherical object, clump" meaning. It was not until the 1400s and 1500s that "cake" was more commonly used for the sweetened form of bread we think of today. The Old Germanic form gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "cecel," which meant "a small cake (bread)," which was then reinforced by, or overtaken by, Old Norse (North Germanic) "kaka" in the 1200s, which quickly took the form "cake," as it has remained ever since. The verb form then developed from the noun in the late 1500s or early 1600s. Common throughout the other Germanic languages: German has "Kuchen," Low German Saxon has "Koke(n)," West Frisian has "koeke," Dutch has "koek," Danish has "kage," Norwegian has "kake," and Swedish and Icelandic have "kaka."