Stalking the Yorshire pikelet...

[fajrdrako]

When I was at Betty's in Yorkshire - a place just one step short of heaven on earth - I ate a thing called a pikelet. I didn't order it, not at first, but ordered a strawberry tart because it looked so good. My friend Catherine ordered a pikelet and kindly let me have a taste. I swooned. Then after recovering (and after finishing my strawberry tart) I ordered a pikelet of my own. The divine taste lingers in my memory, luring me back. Sadly, travelling five thousand kilometres for a snack is a little beyond my budget. But. Tempting.

It's a small, round, lacy, chewy, thin, flat thing something like a crumpet. Served with melted butter. To die for. I haven't been able to find pictures of it online, except, presumably, the rather different Australian version.

I tried to look it up online to see how to pronounce it - I think I said "pike-let" to the waiter. I couldn't find it in any online dictionary, though I was amused to say that although the Encyclopedia Brittanica claimed to be totally ignorant of the word, it elicited me a couple of ads saying Make Easy & Delicious Pancakes! 1000s of Recipes and Pancake - Find Thousands Of Free Recipes, so the people selling pancakes certainly know what it is.

My trusty paper-version Chambers has the entry on page 1291:

a kind of tea-cake, or crumpet, or muffin (dialect); a drop-scone (Austr and NZ). [Welsh bara pyglyd pitchy bread]

I've no idea what "pitchy bread" is, but this explains why the recipes I found online in Australian sources didn't look anything like the lovely thing I ate. Chambers says it's pronounced "peek'-lit", or at least, that's how I interpret their vowels. Which makes sense with cognate Welsh pyglyd.

It seems that the recipes, and the actual pikelets, vary from place to place depending on recipe and maker. I want something like I had at Betty's.

So I did some recipe-searching online. I'd have to experiment to see if I could replicate the real honest-to-goodness (and I mean "goodness") of Betty's pikelet, but this recipe for Durham Pikelets looks like a good bet. On the other hand... do they know what they're doing in Durham? They make great cathedrals, but what are their pikelets like? Are they like those thick Australian pancakes? Or do they use the word to mean 'crumpet'?¹

The University of York sociology department tells me:²

Crumpets are eaten hot with a topping (usually butter). A pikelet is similar to a crumpet, but thinner and sometimes irregularly shaped. However, the meaning of pikelet varies: in some regions of Britain it traditionally refers to a crumpet (for example the Midlands), muffin or other teacake. In other British regions and other commonwealth countries, it is often refered to as a Scotch pancake.

I'm not sure whether this clarifies anything; I'm looking for the real thing. Nothing like crumpets with berries in them. Not like pancakes, not really, except generically. (Round, flat, no doubt cooked in a pan.) More like crèpes than pancakes. Though I am aware than in some nomenclatures, crèpes and pancakes are the same thing.

This blog by Shirley Goode has something she calls a London Crumpet, but it sounds like the right thing.

Maybe.

~ ~ ~

¹ For the record, I also love crumpets. They are sometimes hard to find in Ottawa, but not so difficult that I can't buy them fairly regularly. I have some in my fridge right now, as a matter of fact. Should try making some from scratch.

But what I call a crumpet isn't the same as what I ate at Betty's, not by a long shot.

² I get information wherever I can find it.