Flipping heck!

As Shrove Tuesday approaches, Debora Robertson tucks into the humble pancake's centuries-old past and considers why this traditional feast day survived and 'Collop Monday' did not

- Debora Robertson

HOW many can you eat? As children, for many of us the highlight of Shrove Tuesday was boasting about how many pancakes we could gobble, in a magnificently contrasting display of simplicity and excess.

Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food states that 'an English culinary manuscript of about 1430 refers to pancakes in a way which implies that the term was already familiar, but it does not occur often in early printed cookery books. It seems to have been only in the 17th century that pancakes came to the fore in Britain'. He describes a flour-and-egg batter mixed with milk, cream or water. Wine or brandy was sometimes added, yet, by the 18th century, the tradition of making them with milk or cream predominated.

Florence White's Good Things in England, a book of recipes published in 1932, but including elements from as early as the 14th century, features a 1852 recipe from Somerset that contained 2oz of flour, one egg, a gill of milk and a pinch of salt, to be cooked into very thin pancakes, which were then sprinkled with lemon juice and sugar, rolled up and eaten hot, much as we do today, although Golden Syrup or Nutella may now replace lemon and sugar for some.

Shrove Tuesday was established as a feast day before the abstemious rigours of Lent and pancakes were a chance to use up eggs, sugar, fats and all the other soft and gentle joys of culinary life. The word 'shrove' derives from shriven, as, on that day, people went to confession to be shriven of their sins-the bell that called people to church became known as the pancake bell.