Something happened to buttermilk pancakes between the 1960s, when I was a kid, and today, when I can't seem to find or make a pancake that doesn't dissolve into a mealy mush before I'm halfway through the stack.

When I was younger, this never happened.

My younger self poured lots more syrup on pancakes than my middle-aged self dares to. In those days, the syrup would cascade over the sides like a sugary waterfall, pooling at the bottom of the plate. It didn't disappear into the middle of the top pancake, turning it to pulp and leaving the rest of the pancake dry.

Refusing to resign myself prematurely to a soft-food diet, I wasted hours over the years trying to solve the mystery of the old-school pancake. Theory after theory fell before scientific testing.

The first experiments focused on gadgets and technique. I was careful not to over-mix the wet and dry ingredients, which could make the pancakes tough. I bought a $45 nonstick electric grill and heated it to exactly 375 degrees, waiting for the pancake edges to get firm and the top to pock with bubbles before turning the pancakes.

I even experimented with hot and cold syrups, but nothing gave me the syrup-resistant crust I craved.

That left the ingredients to consider. Maybe the newer mixes were missing an important ingredient — egg or transfats or some essential but unhealthy element. So I tried making pancakes from scratch, alternating recipes in search of the perfect-pancake genome.

Just as I prepared to call off the mission, I learned that Los Alamos National Laboratory employees were volunteering at this year's Pancakes on the Plaza fundraiser, as they have for years. I could think of no better opportunity to pick the big brains at LANL for the answer to a simple science question.

If they couldn't help me, no one could.

Great minds think alike

Besides all the labor it lends to the annual United Way of Santa Fe County pancake feast, the Lab also serves science trivia to the 12,000 hungry people who wait in line for breakfast every July Fourth. A few years ago, science educators from LANL's Bradbury Science Museum created two handouts — "The Physics of Pancakes" and "The Science of Syrup" — "to get pancake event-goers interested in a national laboratory that is known for building the atomic bomb," said Debra Wersonick of the Lab's Community Programs Office.

Studying the pancake flier, I learned that "as a pancake cooks, it undergoes a chemical change and becomes a solid. If you look closely, it is a mixture of solid and gas, like a sponge or piece of foam."

Pancakes bubble as they cook, according to LANL scientists, because "rising agents, such as baking soda and baking powder, produce carbon dioxide. The gas is trapped in the batter, producing bubbles that expand when heated." Those bubbles float to the top of the pancake because "carbon dioxide is less dense than the surrounding batter. ... This causes the first side of the pancake that you cook to be smoother than the second side."

This was fascinating stuff, but it didn't explain how I could turn my pancake surface from ShamWow to Teflon.

Karen Walston Davenport, who works in genome science at the Lab's Bioscience Division, wrote "The Science of Syrup." She offered some theories that reinforced my own, though she expressed in them in more scientific terms.

"The fat in the pancakes can change the texture," she explained in an e-mail. "In days gone by, people used shortening, lard or bacon fat in cooking," but now people prefer unsaturated fats. "The difference in the ingredients (fats) in the pancakes themselves could make the difference in the texture and therefore change how the pancakes absorb the syrup."

And syrup isn't the same as it used to be years ago, Walston Davenport said. "Many commercial syrups today are thinner (less viscous) at room temperature than traditional maple syrup, honey, molasses, or homemade syrups. Thinner syrup would tend to be absorbed more easily than thicker syrup."

Waiting for enlightenment

Even though I lived in Santa Fe for three years before moving to the wilds of southeast Utah, I never tasted the pancakes that inspire people to wait in long lines on the Plaza.

They're made with a commercial Pioneer Brand mix made by Texas-based C.H. Guenther & Son Inc., according to Terry Williams-Keffer, a United Way board member who has coordinated Pancakes on the Plaza for the past
10 years.

The batter is mixed at the Hilton Santa Fe under the supervision of a professional chef and cooked on 38 portable griddles set up in the Plaza. The pancakes disappear as fast as they're cooked, leaving no time for them to sit around and get soggy, Williams-Keffer said.

For now, I've suspended my search for the nonporous pancake. I'm content to sit beneath a tree — like Isaac Newton or the Buddha —and wait for enlightenment to come to me.

Until that day, I'll make my pancakes from a mix — and serve my syrup on the side.

* * *

Swedish pancakes, or plättar, don't even try to be fluffy or light like buttermilk pancakes. They're eggy and a little chewy, just like their French cousin, the crepe.

Some people call them silver-dollar pancakes because they're so much smaller than traditional pancakes. A person can eat 10 of them without feeling like a pig.

Swedish pancakes are easy to make, and they don't absorb syrup like a sponge and get all squishy and unappetizing like regular pancakes do.

When I was a kid, my Dad made Swedish pancakes for us in a regular pan. Now the grandson of Swedish immigrants uses a fancy pan with seven circular depressions that turns out perfectly round pancakes about 3 inches in diameter. He recently shared his recipe with me.

SWEDISH PANCAKES

(Makes 4 to 6 servings)

2-1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

4 cups milk

4 tablespoons melted butter

Syrup or topping as desired

Swedish pancake pan, if available

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Add eggs to 2 cups milk and beat until well mixed. Add to flour mixture and beat until smooth. Beat in 2 cups milk and 4 tablespoons melted butter.

Heat frying pan and spread with melted butter. Pour about a tablespoon of batter into each depression if using Swedish-style pan; use the same quantity if using a regular frying pan, but leave space between cakes.

Brown pancakes on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

Finished pancakes can be spread with a fruit preserve, rolled and sprinkled with confectioners' sugar or covered with syrup.