Pancake Day history

Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday is the traditional feast day on the eve of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Lent - the 40 days before Easter - was traditionally a time of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday Christians went to confession and were 'shriven' (absolved from their sins). It was also the last opportunity to use up eggs, fats and meats before embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes are the perfect way of using up these prohibited ingredients. 

Tossing pancakes 
A thin, flat cake, made of batter and fried in a pan, the pancake has a very long history and featured in cookbooks going back as far as 1439. The tradition of tossing or flipping them is almost as old: 'And every man and maide doe take their turne, And tosse their Pancakes up for feare they burne.' (1619, Pasquil's Palin) 

Certainly these days part of the fun of cooking pancakes is in the tossing. To toss a pancake successfully takes a combination of the perfect pancake and good technique - it's so easy to get it wrong and end up with half the pancake still stuck to the pan while the other half is stuck to the ceiling or floor. All in all, it's probably best practised a few times. 

In the UK, pancake races also form an important part of the Shrove Tuesday celebrations - a fantastic opportunity for large numbers of people to race down the streets tossing pancakes. 

Around the world the relative ease of baking on hot stoves or on griddles has resulted in a variety of pancakes around the world. German and French pancakes, leavened by eggs and much beating, are baked very thin and served with sweet or savoury fillings. The French crêpe is thin and crispy - a crêpe suzette is folded or rolled and heated in a sauce of butter, sugar, citrus juice, and liqueur. 

Russian blinis, usually prepared with buckwheat, are thin, crisp pancakes, and commonly served with caviar and sour cream or folded over and filled with cream cheese or jam. Mexico has its tortilla, which is often served folded over a bean or meat filling and topped by tomato sauce. American pancakes are thicker. They are sometimes called battercakes, griddlecakes, or flapjacks and are usually leavened with baking powder or baking soda and served with syrup. 

Mardi Gras
The French name (literally 'fat Tuesday') for Shrove Tuesday has been given to a number of Mardi Gras carnivals around the world. Among the most famous are those of Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans.