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Comment by chucky | Hacker News Reader

I'm Swedish, and I can confirm that all my Swedish cookbooks contain recipes for "pancakes", "crepes" and "American pancakes", which are definitely 3 different things, and a Swedish "pancake" is a lot like you describe it.

I also have a recipe for what my cookbook calls Danish pancakes, or "æbleskiver" in Danish. Those are more like small round doughnuts prepared in a special frying pan. I'm not sure if the Danish would consider those "pancakes" though.

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To further complicate the pancake taxonomy there is also the curiosity of “plättar”. Very small pancakes made in a special frying pan for more festive occasions. Not sure about their origin, but they are very common in Småland in the south of Sweden.

https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plättar#/media/Fil%3APlattla...

Two more types of small pancakes are poffertjes (Dutch), which sound a lot like your Swedish plättar, and pikelets (English).

Swedish cookery geek who loves visiting the Netherlands: poffertjes have depth, the pan has deep round-bottomed indents to hold batter. Swedish plättar are also made in a special pan (typically cast iron and from someone's granny) but the indents are circular and low, just maybe 3 mm deep. Lucky this is right after breakfast or I would be hungry now.

Plättar sounds a bit like Norwegian lapper. E.g.:

https://www.tine.no/oppskrifter/kaker/vafler-og-smakaker/sve...

But my favourite variant is rislapper, where the starting point is cold rice porridge:

https://www.tine.no/oppskrifter/kaker/vafler-og-smakaker/ris...

As a child we'd often have rice porridge one day, and if there were leftovers we'd have rislapper a day or two later.

You can make it in a regular pan, as the mix is thick enough it'll stay together, so just make them small.

(I strongly object, however, to the use of sour cream, jam and pistachio's to serve with them, and wonder what they'd been smoking - I prefer butter and a sprinkling of sugar)

I don't know how they were made tradionally, but today as you say æbleskiver (apple disks) are not flat, they are spherical. That is why you need the special pan. Also, today most people don't put apple pieces inside them, instead eat them with some kind of jam, strawberry or raspberry.

Pancake seems to be reserved for flat things, so yeah æbleskiver would not be considered pancakes.

I have an æbleskiver cast iron pan. Only used it a couple of times, seems like a lot of trouble for what you get.

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