I was due to provide R J with a blog post on love, an appropriate emotion for the month in question. Valentine’s Day is not a holiday I embrace with any enthusiasm, too commercial for my tastes, but since True Love is definitely a factor in my latest novel, Lovers Entwined, I figured I would be able to scrape a post together.
Except… I’ve driven past an advert for Pancake Day outside my local supermarket every day this week. And each time I’ve got a little more irate.
“Why?” I hear you cry. What could be more innocuous than a batter made of eggs, milk and flour?
The stack of pancakes in question are fat and fluffy, artfully arranged with plump, purple blueberries. Nothing wrong with that, they look very tasty. If you want American breakfast pancakes.
However, they are NOT the sort of pancakes traditionally eaten in England on Shrove Tuesday. Those pancakes should be thin, flat, even lacy creations, running with lemon and sugar. They should be cooked in a frying pan, not on a griddle. They need no raising agent. You should be able to TOSS them!
Calm down, dear. It’s only a pancake.
No, it’s more than that, it’s a part of my history. Pancakes have been made in this traditional way on Shrove Tuesday for a thousand years or more. How hard can it be for a huge chain of supermarkets to take a photograph of the type of pancakes that reflect the heritage of the country I live in, and they are trading in?
Time to provide some background information to my tirade.
Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, is the day before Lent starts. It's a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins.
Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving that Christians used to undergo in the past. In shriving, a person confesses their sins and receives absolution for them. This tradition is over a thousand years old.
Lent is a time of abstinence, so Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent. Historically this meant meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods.
So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without going off.
Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.
Another tradition of the day are Pancake races. The origin of the pancake race is rumoured to date back to 1445. History would have it that a woman had lost track of the time on Shrove Tuesday, and was busy cooking pancakes in her kitchen. When she heard the church bell ringing to call the faithful to church for confession, she raced out of her house and ran all the way to church. Still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron!
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