Shrove Tuesday

Flat as a Pancake by Marion Watson

Shrove Tuesday, forty days before Easter is when our thoughts turn to pancakes.

Traditionally a way of using up rich foods in the larder before the beginning of Lent the custom of eating pancakes on that day goes back to before Elizabethan times and there was a tradition of ringing a pancake bell which was the signal for everyone to stop work and join in the festivities of pancake day, which included pancake races where participants ran along tossing a pancake in the air as they went, a custom still observed in some places to this day.

John Taylor in his Jack-a-Lent, written in 1620 writes:

"By that time the clock strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine¸ then there is a bell rung, called the Pancake Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted."

But pancakes were around long before that. They are symbolic of unleavened bread at the Feast of the Passover and were commonplace in communities where lack of an oven meant that all cooking had to be done over the fire. They were known in Chaucer’s time when they were called crisps or cresps , similar to the French crêpes of today. A fifteenth century recipe book instructs:

"Put a little of the white comade (a filling mixture),
and let it flow all around as thou makest a pancake."

Cooks have always shown off their prowess by tossing pancakes to cook both sides; Pasquil’s Palinodia of 1619 says:

 "And every man and maid do take their turn and toss their pancakes up for fear they burn."

Mistress Margaret Dods in her Cook and Housewife’s Manual, written in 1827, describes pancakes as:

 "An economical and genteel addition to small dinners and have the advantage of being quickly forthcoming upon any emergency."

Whilst a little later, in the 1850s, Eliza Acton, in her work, The English Bread Book, says: 

"There is no difficulty in making good omelette, pancakes or fritters; and they may be expeditiously prepared and served, they are often a very convenient resource when, on short notice, an addition is required to a dinner."

Perhaps we British are a bit restrained in what we put in our pancakes, favouring sugar and lemon, or perhaps jam or syrup, although we may go in for a savoury filling now and then (a good way of using up a small amount of poultry or ham, bound together in a sauce. Whilst other countries go in for a far wider selection of fillings, for example blinis or the huge French crêpes, wafer thin and folded in four, although I was put off French crêpes after watching the attendant in a public toilet mass producing pancakes over an oil stove for the benefit of a local restaurant. Of course the Americans serve them for breakfast. In Hungary they are huge, quite thick and very, very filling. Dorothy Hartley in her Food in England, says:

"Abroad, pancakes are usually open and piled up together. In England our pancakes are symbols of our insular detachment, for each is rolled up by itself, aloof, with its own small slice of lemon."

The Scots and the Welsh have their own variations on pancakes. Scotch Pancakes, or Drop Scones are very small and contain baking powder. They are fried on a griddle (sometimes called a girdle) on both sides, covered with a cloth and left to cool, then buttered and eaten with afternoon tea. One recipe for Welsh Pancakes, (Crempog), are made by rubbing butter into flour then mixing to a batter with buttermilk, an egg is beaten in and just before frying half a teaspoon of baking powder is added. Again they are fried in a buttered pan or on a griddle.

Snow pancakes are an old-fashioned seasonal favourite. Using an ordinary pancake batter, just before cooking a tablespoonful of fresh, firm snow is stirred in. It is then fried quickly so that the batter sets before the snow has melted, leaving holes in the pancake