In a world of chaos you want peace in the moment. You want an elixir, a panacea, a remedy, a reminder. You want to bask in the easygoing air of a sleepy Sunday. You want comfort.

You want pancakes.

Crisp and light with shades of van Gogh's sunflowers in swirls of buttery yellow, amber, and ale, pancakes recall simple days and easy nights.

They are as restorative as sunshine, and a suitable antidote to rain. Pancakes promise solace, allay fear, and mitigate stress. They are the embodiment of brunch and the measure of a good diner.

Pancakes can be as American as corn fritters, johnnycakes, or flapjacks; as elegant as crepes or savory buckwheat galettes; or as ethnic as blintzes or latkes. Whether eaten at breakfast, brunch, or dinner, pancakes are cause for celebration.

Something akin to a pancake has been around from the Greek and Roman eras through the Middle Ages, says Ken Albala, a University of the Pacific historian and author of Pancake: A Global History, (Reaktion Books, London, 2008).

Shrove Tuesday (from the verb shrive, to confess) became pancake day as an opportunity to use up a family's store of eggs, milk, and butter before the start of Lent, Albala says.

"Around the globe, different people have decidedly different associations with pancakes," Albala writes, "The story of pancakes is as much about the people who make and consume them as the food itself."

Marsha Hogan of Elkins Park learned to make Danish filled pancakes called ebelskivers (sometimes spelled ebleskivers, but always pronounced a-bell-skivers) in her native Utah. Hogan, director of the Jenkintown branch of Settlement Music School, is from a family of Danish and Swedish immigrants. But she didn't discover ebelskivers at home.

"I learned about them from my landlord, a widow from whom I was renting a small basement apartment when I had my first job. . . .

"Sometimes she invited me upstairs for meals. She made rabbit stew and venison and then these things she called ebelskivers. I was surprised I hadn't heard of them before. And when I left to get married, she gave me her ebelskiver pan and the original recipe booklet as a wedding present."

Like waffles, ebelskivers can only be made in a particular pan. Hogan's is a cast-iron model made by Griswold, but newer Nordicware versions are available for less than $40.

To make ebelskivers, put a bit of batter into each of the pan's seven wells. Then add a dollop of filling (cooked apples, lemon curd, jam), and cover with more batter. When the sides seem crisp, flip them over with wooden chopsticks or knitting needles and let them cook on the other side.

"Making ebelskivers at home was always a celebration. My kids loved them and they were always after me to make them," Hogan says.

But for most of us, the simple, straightforward pancake of our childhood Sundays is what we long to re-create and perfect. For advice, we turned to pancake connoisseur Marshall Green, whose Cafe Estelle at 444 N. 4th Street is marking its second anniversary with a reputation for some of the best flapjacks in town.

When I tell him that at home, my first pancake is always a flop, he says that could be because I'm using a skillet instead of a griddle. Maybe my pan is too hot or too cold. (If using an electric griddle, he suggests setting the temp at 350 to 375 degrees. A teaspoonful of batter is a good test to see if the heat is right. Cook the pancakes until the batter starts to bubble and the edges start to dry, about three minutes. Then flip and cook for a minute or minute and a half, says Green.)

Green would not divulge the exact recipe for his pancakes - "Pancakes is half my business, I'm not giving that away," he says.

But he advises against scrimping on cost or calories. His pancakes contain heavy cream, full-fat buttermilk, and plenty of butter.

Use homemade, not store-bought batter, he says, and leave it lumpy. Separate the eggs, and whip the whites and add them last.

"For fillings, you can go sweet or savory," says Green, who makes a great corn and bacon pancake.

And there are certainly plenty of variations offered in new cookbooks this fall.

Serena Thompson and Teri Edwards, a.k.a. The Farm Chicks, feature Cardamom Griddle Cakes (see recipe) in their first cookbook, The Farm Chicks in the Kitchen (Hearst Books, 2009).

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's latest, Cooking With Friends (William Morrow, 2009), offers chocolate chip pancakes with orange-brandy sauce (see recipe).

At Bubby's restaurants in Tribeca and Brooklyn, chef/owner Ron Silver says requests for pancakes keep pace with other brunch specialties.

His Bubby's Brunch Cookbook (Ballantine Books, 2009) contains recipes for sour cream, buttermilk, banana walnut, orange ricotta, buckwheat, sourdough, and Swedish pancakes (the last made with a thin batter and served with lingonberries and herring), as well as German skillet-baked pancakes (baked in the oven and paired with sausage), classic johnnycakes made with cornmeal, five kinds of crepes, and his mom's cheese blintzes.

Whatever the filling, Green says, be sure to serve only pure maple syrup. He likes Grade A light.

"The lighter the color," he says, "the better the taste."

Contact staff writer Dianna Marder at 215-854-4211 or dmarder@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/diannamarder.