The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

French · Dessert

Crêpes

  • Easy
  • 40 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich · bright Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light.

Ingredients

  • 250g flour
  • 3 eggs
  • 500ml milk
  • 30g melted butter
  • Pinch salt, 1 tbsp sugar for sweet

The skills inside

Crêpes

The words inside

Gruyère

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Blend everything smooth; rest 30 min so the flour hydrates. 30 min
  2. Heat a lightly buttered pan; pour a thin layer, swirling immediately.
  3. Flip when the edges lace and lift, ~1 min; 20 seconds more. 1 min
  4. Stack under a towel; fill with lemon-sugar, jam, or ham and Gruyère.

How it should come out

  • The cooked face is lace-mottled: irregular brown blotches over pale gold; the second side is barely coloured and matte, and that side faces in.
  • The crêpe is a full circle out to the pan's edge and even across it, under 2mm and translucent when held to the light, with no thick lip where the batter stalled.
  • It folds into quarters without cracking: the lacy edge is crisp, the body supple, never leathery.
  • Stacked crêpes peel apart one at a time without fusing or tearing, and chew soft with no rubber.
  • The batch yields at least a dozen from a 24cm pan. Eight or nine fat ones means they were poured thick, whatever they look like individually.

Where it goes wrong The batter keeps thickening on the bench while the first ones cook and is never loosened back to thin cream: the later crêpes stop running to the edge, set thick and matte, chew like pancakes and fold into a wedge instead of lying flat.

At the Table

The Pour
Moscato d’Asti
Also Right
Late-harvest Riesling
From the Taps
Witbier
Zero-Proof
Sparkling elderflower

Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Crêpes Technique: CrêpesThe skill inside this recipe Search YouTube: Jacques Pépin on Crêpes A YouTube search for Jacques Pépin and this dish. No affiliation.