Flapjack Flop, the Finer Points
You’ve made the batter your grandmother perfected 70 years ago. Your cast iron griddle, a veteran of thousands of flapjacks has been perfectly seasoned since you inherited it from her, and is sitting, gently heated, waiting patiently… to waste your first flapjack.
There is an elegant logic to the first flapjack flop phenomenon, owing perhaps more to the ancient diety Vulcan than to today’s more widely revered pancake gods.
Before mingling myth and maple syrup, permit me to kindle this thesis with a bit of griddle physics.
Law and Order
All metals have a thermal efficiency (aka conductivity), which is the rate at which they pass energy, expressed as watts per meter (squared) per second, Kelvin (Fourier’s Law). Energy can diffuse throughout a metal while exciting (“working”) it, but will only complete its transmission upon transferring (“sinking”) into some material of lower temperature and higher potential for state change. The rate at which this transfer happens depends on the steepness of the decreasing temperature gradient (Second Law of Thermodynamics)
As an analogous example using Ohm’s Law, which applies to electricity, an incandescent light bulb passes 110v from copper (highly conductive, low resistance) into a highly resistant tungsten filament (the glowing bit) prompting a state change (accelerated particle vibration, which couples electrical and magnetic fields to throw off photons, i.e., the glow).
You now know 89% more than 99% of griddlenauts. On to where the carbs hit the pan — specifically frying something starchy like a pancake.
Enter, the Carbs
The energy going into a cast iron griddle works its way slowly through the metal (iron is a relatively low-efficiency transmitter at about 26–31W/㎡K, versus, say, copper at 401W/㎡K, so we think of iron as banking energy), transferring into a smear of oil, which equalizes with the metal almost immediately, before receiving its first glob of carbs (batter).
Upon contact, the carbs sink energy to complete to thermal circuit, transferring the banked energy built up in the iron. The heat is now flowing into the lower temperature batter — rather than building in the metal.
When this happens the surface of the iron assumes its operating temperature, whereas prior to being dosed with batter the surface crystalline structure of the iron is simply increasing its vibration with the addition of energy which is pouring into the metal faster than it transfers to the air surrounding the metal. The air, like the oil, is close to metal’s temperature and so is not much of a sink (unless it’s moving, which is why blowing on hot things cools them).
With the “heat column” in place, the iron is “operating” whereas prior to being dosed with batter the energy contained within it is considered “latent”. Eliminating latency is what keeps the pan itself from becoming the part of the energy chain that undergoes a state change; any metal (and most silicates) heated long and hot enough will begin to glow and ultimately melt.
To Caramelize, or Not to Caramelize
Pancake batter is made up of two principle ingredients that cause the browning so agreeable to our palates — carbohydrates and amino acids/proteins. At a pre-operational surface temperature, the first dose of batter hits a surface that is likely hovering somewhere around 300–500℉. This causes a low level (i.e., too cool to advance to browning) Maillard reaction to occur amongst egg and milk proteins and various aminos in the batter, encrusting the boundary layer of the pancake, preventing starchy ingredients from contacting the metal. The heat transfer inward from the proteinaceous boundary layer proceeds to “cake” (i.e., enchain proteins, especially gluten) the batter contained within the interior.
In a complex mix of egg, milk and wheat proteins, the Maillard reaction begins around 300–325℉. With a layer of congealed proteins encasing the pancake, starches or sugars fail to reach the cooking interface to caramelize, which is a different browning process happening at a much lower temperature (about 150–160℉ in the case of white flour and processed sugars, a little higher for unprocessed starches).
The temperature at which a state change begins to occur generally anchors the cooking surface operational range. If the pancake is browning at 160℉, the pan surface operates at this temperature as long as it’s in contact with the batter (conservation of energy).
The first sacrificial pancake steps the system energy down from 500℉ to about 300℉, mostly eliminating the potential for protein coagulation and allowing (tasty) caramelization of of starches.
The onset of this state change further lowers system interface energy to something in the range of the caramelization reaction (under 200℉ in most cases).
By eliminating latency and achieving an operational temperature much more conducive to the caramelization of starches, that’s precisely what ends up being your batter’s boundary layer. The next glob of batter will make contact with a surface that is not so hot that it coagulates surface proteins and aminos before converting starches and sugars, allowing the latter to change state first, ahead of the protein matrix.
Of course, carbohydrates proceed very quickly from caramelized to burned; without proteins in the mix, pure flour or sugar would hit that same 500℉ “pre-heated” pan and undergo pyrolysis (breaking all the hydrates out to leave pure carbon) very quickly. Protein and aminos, undergoing Maillard reactions at higher temperature sink some of the energy further into the system, relieving state-change pressure on the starches at the interface, allowing balanced, deep browning, and passing energy into the interior to facilitate caking. Of course, pyrolysis will occur if caramelization goes on too long; the metal’s interface temperature rises in lockstep with what it’s sinking energy into, and pyrolysis is a legitimate state change.
Vulcan is always most pleased to have something to which he might apply his hammer, that is, something into which to pass his energy. An aspect of Vulcan myth associates the god with a principle of fertility — penetration by Vulcan’s energy causes things to grow. Understanding our nourishment in a poetical dimension adds, I think, to the pleasures of both the making and the consuming, and I suspect that Vulcan himself would not resist having the title Pancake God added to his portfolio.
