Crumpet

A crumpet (/ˈkrʌmpɪt/ ^ⓘ) is a small griddle bread made from an unsweetened batter of water or milk, flour, and yeast originating from the United Kingdom. It has since become popular in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Historically, crumpets are also regionally known as pikelets, however this is limited as pikelets are more widely known as a thinner, more pancake-like griddle bread; a type of the latter is referred to as a crumpet in Scotland.

Crumpets have been variously described as originating in Wales or as part of the Anglo-Saxon diet, based on proposed etymologies of the word. In either case, breads were, historically, commonly cooked on a griddle wherever bread ovens were unavailable. The bara planc^a, or griddle bread, baked on an iron plate over a fire, was part of the everyday diet in Wales until the 19th century.

Small, oval pancakes baked in this manner were called picklets, a name used for the first recognisable crumpet-type recipe, published in 1769 by Elizabeth Raffald in The Experienced English Housekeeper. This name was derived from the Welsh bara pyglyd or "pitchy [i.e., dark or sticky] bread", later shortened simply to pyglyd. The early 17th century lexicographer Randle Cotgrave referred to "popelins, soft bread of fine flour, &c., fashioned like our Welsh barrapycleds".

The word spread initially to the West Midlands of England, where it became anglicised as pikelet, and subsequently to Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and other areas of Northern England; crumpets are still referred to as pikelets in some areas. The word crumpet itself, of unclear origin, first appears in relatively modern times; it has been suggested as referring to a crumpled or curled-up cake, based on an isolated 14th century reference to a "crompid cake", and the Old English word crompeht ('crumpled') being used to gloss Latin folialis, possibly a type of thin bread.

Alternatively, crumpet may be related to the Welsh crempog or crempot, a type of pancake; Breton krampouzh and Cornish krampoth for 'pancakes' are cognate with the Welsh. An etymology from French crompâte 'a paste of fine flour, slightly baked', has also been suggested. However, a correspondent to Manchester Notes and Queries, writing in 1883, claimed that the crampet, as it was then locally known, simply took its name from the metal ring or "cramp" used to retain the batter during cooking.

The early crumpets were hard pancakes cooked on a griddle, rather than the soft and spongy crumpets of the Victorian era, which were made with yeast. From the 19th century, a little bicarbonate of soda was also usually added to the batter. In modern times, the mass production of crumpets by large commercial bakeries has eroded some regional differences. As late as the 1950s, Dorothy Hartley noted a wide degree of regional variation, identifying the small, thick, spongy type of crumpet specifically with the Midlands.

Crumpets are distinguished from similar sized muffins by being made from a batter, rather than a dough. English crumpets are generally circular, roughly 8 centimetres (3 in) in diameter and 2 centimetres (3⁄4 in) thick. Their shape comes from being restrained in the pan/griddle by a shallow ring. They have a characteristic flat top with many small pores and a spongy texture which allows butter or other spreads to permeate.