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Glite Dictionary
crepe Suzette

crepe Suzette

1 8.1
Thin pancakes come with a warm orange and lemon sauce often set on fire at the table
  • noun
  • /kreɪp suˈzɛt/
translation icon : crepe Suzette
  • The chef surprised everyone by preparing crepe Suzette with a delightful orange sauce.

Examples

  • - I'll have the pasta salad and the crepes Suzette for dessert, please.

    My Mom's a Werewolf (1989)

  • At a nearby table, a waiter has just poured brandy on Crepe Suzette.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • For dessert, we ordered crepe Suzette, which was served flambéed at our table.

  • After dinner, we indulged in crepe Suzette, featuring a perfect blend of citrus and liqueur.

Surface Forms

crepe Suzette singular
crepes Suzette plural
crêpes Suzette plural
crêpe Suzette singular

Morphology

crepe + Suzette

The constituent 'crêpe/crepe' clearly signals a type of thin pancake, so a learner would infer it's a variety of crepe; however 'Suzette' is a proper name with no lexical meaning, so the specific ingredients and the characteristic orange-sauce/flambé preparation are not predictable from the parts. This partial predictability (type = crepe but not the sauce/preparation) makes the expression only partially transparent to B1 learners.

Etymology

Crepe Suzette may come from a famous kitchen story about a young woman named Suzette: a chef poured butter, orange juice and a little brandy over a thin crepe and the sauce accidentally caught fire. That's why the name now means a thin pancake with a bright orange sauce that is often 'set on fire' at the table.