Happy Shrovetide!
Today is Shrove Tuesday, the day before the 40 day long fast-a-thon that is Lent, so we best have a big-old festival, no?
No.
Where do you think this is? France? America? This is Britain, and whilst the rest of the Christian world is dancing, drinking, feasting and parading, we do not bow to such vulgarities, instead we have some pancakes and a nice cup of tea.
I jest of course; though between you and me, I would happily swap Mardi Gras for Pancake Day any day.
In Britain and Ireland, we make and eat pancakes before Lent because it is a very good way of using up main staple ingredients: flour, fat, eggs and sugar before the onset of Lent. By pancakes, we typically mean crepe-style pancakes, but the UK has a wide variety of different pancakes which are all delicious. I suppose you could add the griddle/girdle cakes to the list too as they typically use the same ingredients, but they are a little hit-and-miss, in my opinion.
These days, of course, we don’t really fast for the run up to Easter, but I do like to follow traditions, at least when it comes to eating food (I happily ignore the abstinence bits). I remember as a child, my family always had pancakes for tea on Shrove Tuesday and I don’t think we ate them any other day, I remember thinking you weren’t allowed to eat them unless it was Pancake Day. I have made up for this as an adult, especially now I am living in America.
It is traditional to take part in a pancake race on Pancake Day, which involves running a course whilst flipping pancakes. I have very hazy memories of doing this when I was little, but I don’t think that I have seen nor heard anything about pancake racing in the last 20 years, maybe more. It’s a shame that these things are dying out, I know many think it’s a little naff or twee, but I love stuff like that. It enriches life. Next year I shall hold a pancake race I think.
Pancake racing in the chemistry lab of
Westfield College, London, 1963
Shrove Tuesday is really the final day of a two-day period known as Shrovetide which was part of an unofficial festival called Carnival that ran from Epiphany. It was essentially a period of time for a lot of gluttony and frivolity in order to prepare for the nightmarish 40 days of misery beginning on Ash Wednesday.
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Welsh Light Cakes
I love all types of pancakes, but the best ones come from Wales. This recipe from Jane Grigson for Welsh light cakes is excellent; they are made with soured cream, which gives them a wonderful tang. I have never found a pancake recipe to beat it, so I urge you to give it a go. If you make these with British soured cream, the resulting pancake batter is thin, giving them a frothy frilly texture. If you make them with American soured cream, the batter is much thicker, making them fluffy. Either way results in deliciousness.
Ingredients:
6 rounded tbsp. flour
2 rounded tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. soured cream
a pinch of salt
3 eggs
½ tsp. bicarbonate of soda
1 rounded tbsp. cream of tartar
4 tbsp. water
¼ pint buttermilk or milk
fat or oil
butter
Beat together the flour, sugar, cream, salt and eggs. Next, mix together the bicarbonate and cream of tartar with the water and as it froths, tip it into the batter and stir it in. Add the milk or buttermilk to produce the desired consistency. Less for thick and fluffy, more for thin and lacy.
Heat the fat or oil on a suitable frying pan, swirl it around so the pan is coated and pour out any excess. Add a ladelful of batter and fry until golden brown, then carefully, quickly and confidently flip the pancake and cook the other side.
Stack the pancakes on top of one another and keep them warm in the oven, adding a pat or two of butter to each one.
Cut the stack into quarters and eat with golden syrup and more butter if you like.
British Food: A History 
Ah, Neil, you keep giving me moments of nostalgia! During the war (1940-1945) I was 5 when it began and 10 when it ended. I lived in South Wales in a house next door to a farm. Our milk was delivered from churns on the back of a waggon drawn by a black shire horse. I had to take a two-pint jug into the street and get it filled for tuppence. Sour milk was always to hand so your Welsh pancakes were very much a staple. As of course were the inimitable Welshcakes (we called them ‘bakestones’ and devoured them by the fistful). And I can still replicate the tang of my mother’s cream cheese made simply by solidifying soured milk by suspending it in muslin and letting the whey drip away. We caught it of course and put it in the pancakes . . .
iechyd da . . .
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Well I am glad to be of some service to someone, Eric! They are a relativey recent discovery for me and I am more than a little jealous of your childhood – it seems so romantic. Thanks very much for your comments, you always improve my posts with them.
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I doubt that you have anything to be jealous of Neil. All is romantic in retrospect. Today I’ll have pancakes hot and sticky with miel de cana.
Ta.
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The ‘Good Old Days’ syndrome, I suppose I do the same…
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Britain has a lot more celebrations than Pancakes though they are dying out as people lose contact with their rural roots, e.g. try looking up Shrove Tuesday football matches
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Yes indeed…there are lots of traditions that have disappeared or are disappearing. No one does Collop Monday anymore for example…I’ll be doing more stuff about Shrovetide and Lent next year so keep an eye out!
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