IT’S time to get out your frying pans, eggs and flour because regardless of whether you like your pancakes doused in lemon juice and sugar or stacked high and soaked with maple syrup, today is the day to get frying and flipping.

Shrove Tuesday, or as it is perhaps better known, Pancake Day falls exactly 47 days before Easter so the date moves but it will always be between February 3 and March 9 and always falls the day before Ash Wednesday.

The name Shrove Tuesday comes from ’shrive’, meaning absolution for sins by doing penance. The day gets its name from the tradition of Christians trying to be ’shriven’ before Lent.

Traditionally, pancakes were eaten on this day to use up rich, indulgent foods like eggs and milk before the 40-day fasting season of Lent began. But although it is enshrined in Christian tradition, it is believed that Pancake Day might originate in a pagan holiday, when eating warm, round pancakes - symbolising the sun - was a way of celebrating the arrival of spring.

As well as making and eating pancakes it has for many years been traditional to hold pancake races, where people run while flipping their cooking pancakes. Legend has it that the tradition was born in the 15th century when a particularly disorganised woman in Buckinghamshire rushed to church to confess her sins while mid-way through making pancakes.

Other traditional also exist in various parts of the country like this one which was known prior to 1846 the city of Leicester had its own very particular way of celebrating the event.

 

At this time Shrove Tuesday was an occasion for an outburst of eating, drinking and riotous entertainments. 

 

A letter written by ‘J.C.B.’ to William Hone, author of the Year Book first published in 1829, explained how on the morning of Shrove Tuesday, a fair was held in the Newarke, with stalls selling food and drink and musical entertainment.

 

At about midday, a game of ‘hockey’ or ‘single stick’ played by two teams of men and boys, began. However, this was only the prelude to the main entertainment of the day – the ‘Whipping Toms’.

 

By one o’clock, any of the more timid onlookers would wisely have made themselves scarce. At this hour, three men clad in blue smocks and armed with ‘a large waggon whip’ - a formidable weapon, capable of causing serious injury - appeared, attended by three other men, who carried a bell. 

 

These were the ‘Whipping Toms’, who, as ‘J.C.B.’ explains, ‘[claimed] the right of flogging every person whom they [could] catch, while their attendant bell-man [could] keep ringing his bell’.

 

Those who had remained in the crowd would therefore surround the bell-men and try to capture the bell, running the risk of a severe whipping by doing so.

 

The contests lasted for several hours and inevitably the game degenerated into violence, with many wounded or seriously bruised and frequent fights springing up between the participants.

 

The origins of this custom are uncertain – but the extortion of two pence from many of the fearful onlookers undoubtedly cemented its popularity with the main participants.

 

The custom was eventually outlawed by a clause in the Leicester Improvement Act of 1846.

 

Mrs T. Fielding Johnson reports that, in the following year, ‘a mob, some of whom carried brick ends in old stockings, again assembled to claim the ancient right, the Mayor … was compelled to enforce the law and some sharp fighting ensued’. 

 

The authorities were eventually victorious, however, and, from then on, the Newarke during Shrove Tuesday became a more peaceful place, ultimately helping to lead to the pancake-prolific day we know today.

Pancake Day has always been a source of endless fascinating and in 2012, University College London came up with a formula for the perfect flipping technique. According to University Professor of Mathematics Frank Smith, who highlighted the risks and calculated a simple mathematical formula for the perfect flip to be:

L = 4×H /p– D / 2

(L = hand distance from inner edge of the pancake / H = height of flip / D = diameter of pancake)

For the perfect Shrove Tuesday pancake you will need:

110g/4oz plain flour, sifted

pinch of salt

2 eggs

200ml/7fl oz milk mixed with 75ml/3fl oz water

50g/2oz butter

caster sugar

lemon juice

lemon wedges

Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl so the flour gets an airing. Make a well in the centre of the flour and break the eggs into it. Then begin whisking the eggs incorporating any bits of flour from around the edge of the bowl as you do so.

Gradually add small quantities of the milk and water mixture, still whisking (don’t worry about any lumps as they will eventually disappear as you whisk). Slowly add the liquid until the batter is smooth, with the consistency of thin cream. Now melt the 50g/2oz of butter in a pan. Spoon 2 tbsp of it into the batter and whisk it in, then pour the rest into a bowl and use it to lubricate the pan.

When the pan is really hot, turn the heat down to medium and, to start with, do a test pancake to see if you’re using the correct amount of batter. It’s helpful if you spoon the batter into a ladle so it can be poured into the hot pan in one go. As soon as the batter hits the hot pan, tip it around from side to side to get the base evenly coated with batter. It should take only half a minute or so to cook; you can lift the edge with a palette knife to see if it’s tinged gold as it should be.

Flip the pancake over either either in the traditional way or using a pan slice or palette knife - the other side will need a few seconds only - then simply slide it out of the pan onto a plate.

Stack the pancakes as you make them between sheets of greaseproof paper on a plate fitted over simmering water, to keep them warm while you make the rest.

To serve, sprinkle each pancake with freshly squeezed lemon juice and caster sugar, fold in half, then in half again to form triangles, or else simply roll them up. Serve sprinkled with a little more sugar and lemon juice and extra sections of lemon.