Jun 9, 2005 | The Rationale Behind the Crêpe

I have a certain weakness for la crêpe, the circular-pancake-turned-cone that you find all over Paris. I guess it is a bit wierd to eat crêpes during the summer, but today’s unusually cold weather, alongside the fact that I had to go quite out of my way to get a simple ink cartridge, warranted a €2 delight.

€2 for a crêpe au sucre is more than one might usually pay, but around the Champs Elysées and the 16th arrodissement, it’s usual to pay 20 to 50% more than you would elsewhere in Paris. For example, at Saint-Denis, further east, a typical crêpe au sucre costs around €1.20, meaning I pay 67% more.

But that isn’t what this post is about. This is, rather, about my single qualm I have with the crêpe that I buy in Paris, nearly everywhere I’ve been to (obviously I disregard the crêpe au Nutella, miel (honey), bananes, and the myriad of other, purely unhealthy variations of the delicacy): dispensing sugar. Most of the crêpes I have start off with the plain crêpe flubberiness, and ends with such a mouthful of sugar that I inevitably have to shake my crêpe, as though I suffered from a seizure, in order to scatter the sugar and get anything close to the crêpe.

Nearly all crêpe-ists, when putting sugar on the crêpe of those anxiously waiting over the counter (or outside), usually do so from the inside of the crêpe to the outside, in a roughly circular manner.

Acceptable, but purely unacceptable.

In doing so, when the crêpe is wrapped into the traditional triangular shape and then stuffed into those Bible-paper thin napkins, you get a chunk of sugar in the middle (which becomes the bottom) and wisps of it at the top, or the outer fringe.

If you dispense the sugar from the middle of the open, circular crêpe to the outside, chances are that you do it in a spiral. That means more sugar gets loaded towards the middle, and less on the outer fringes. Moreover, when the crêpe is folded and put upright, whatever sugar that isn’t stuck to the fringe settles downwards, as gravity forces it to. Downwards, ie towards the middle of the crêpe.

So what happens is this:

1st bite: “Hm.. I wonder where the sugar is. Ah well, it’s further in, I bet.”
2nd bite: “Oh here we go. A bit of delight here.”
3rd bite: “Oooh. Sugar…”
4th bite: “Uh. Lots here… tis getting a bit too sugary here.”
5th pre-bite: [toss toss] “Too much sugar.”

The solution? Why not dispense sugar from outside in? There was one crêpe stall at a nearby market several months ago where I caved in and bought a crêpe beurre sucrée. What was wholly remarkable, however, was that it was really cheap, it was really good, and the lady inverted the crêpe when she put it in a napkin, so that you had the triangle sticking out. Smaaaaaart lady. Rakes in profits that way, I bet.

Ahem. Right.

Also written on this day..

• 2011: Aerial video from Stanford's campus
• 2010: Install Android 2.2 Froyo on iPhone 3G on Windows with pics and video
• 2008: The Fourth Factor Authorization
• 2007: To lose it all