WHATS IN A NAME
Are you sitting down to a crumpet, a scotch pancake, perhaps a muffin, what about an English Crumpet or is it actually a Picklet or Bara-Blanc?
In our house these are crumpets and where we buy them from seem to agree- at least that is what is on the packet (we can make them, honest!) but are these true crumpets? Where do they come from and what have the Anglo-Saxons got to do with?
There is slightly conflicting stories about where and when Crumpets started their life. This is in part due to the fact that they have simple ingredients and are easy to make without an oven. Some claim that the welsh first produced crumpets and that it comes from their type of tea bread they have called Bara Blanc.
A second claim has been made though and that is that Crumpets are actually an Anglo-Saxon food. As said above, it is more than likely that every region had their own form of something very similar to our modern day crumpets.
In Yorkshire, Picklets or Pikelets are still eaten and they look very similar to Crumpets. There is reference to Picklets in a 1769 cookbook called The Experienced English Housekeeper. The recipe is a cross between a dough and a batter, but produces a "cake" very similar in appearance to a crumpet
So are the Crumpets we know just a follow on from Picklets? Well in 1382 a John Wycliffe mentioned something called a Crompit cake and in 1694 a William Westmacott mentioned oat cakes called Crompits and the Welsh had another cake called the Crempog - which was another type of pancake, then in come the Americans in the 1800s with an English Crumpet which is in fact a Muffin ( not the cake with icing type though) and then to top it all us Scots come along and in some regions of Scotland a crumpet is called a Scotch Pancake - see how confusing this is getting!
So lets break it down a bit.....We can't with any certainty say who invented crumpets or when they stated being made, but we do know a few wee facts to help with Crumpet identification
Crumpets are made from a batter and have holes on the top after cooking. Muffins that you toast are made from dough ( they were originally made from dough left over from making bread) and when split after toasting have their holes on the inside. Also muffins made the UK sometimes had potato added to make the dough go further
English Muffins are just muffins, but the chap who brought them to American tables was from Plymouth, England and to help sell them named them English Muffins. They are slightly flatter than a muffin, so that they could be toasted in new Electric toasters in 1893! Scotch pancakes, yes sorry some people sometimes call crumpets scotch pancakes, but Scotch pancakes are something different altogether, but that's a different blog topic! Picklets are quite flat, like a pancake with holes on topAnd finally, the Victorians introduced the metal sleeve that Crumpets are cooked in and that's what makes them quite round and thick.
and finally finally, Do you know the muffin man?
This rhyme was first recorded in a manuscript in 1820 and is about the muffin men who went door to door selling freshly baked goods such as crumpets and muffins to the wealthy householders and yes, a lot of them did live in Drury lane!