Flipping fascinating facts on Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday has, as you can imagine, plenty of history attached.

And Sam Bilton of English Heritage has been researching its origins and the importance of today in the Christian calendar.

He says: “In Christian traditions, the 40 days before Easter are known as Lent, and they mark the time that Jesus spent fasting in the desert. Traditionally, Christians would mark the period with prayers and fasting, abstaining from a whole range of foods, including meat, eggs, fish, fats and milk.

“The word ‘shrove’ comes from the old Roman Catholic practice of being ‘shriven’ – meaning to confess one’s sins. The shriving bell would be rung on Shrove Tuesday to call people to church to confess.”

Shrove Tuesday was effectively the day to gorge on food that would be out of bounds in the week to come. Mr Bilton adds: “Before Lent could begin in earnest, all edible temptations needed to be removed. This took place over a period of days known as ‘Shrovetide’. Meat such as bacon would be eaten up on ‘Collop Monday’. And on Shrove Tuesday eggs, butter and stocks of fat would be used up. One of the easiest ways to dispose of these items was to turn them into pancakes or fritters, a custom which continued long after the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century.”

The Monday and Tuesday before Lent were periods of great festivity before the coming abstinence. Children would go ‘Shroving’ or ‘Lent-crocking’ on Shrove Tuesday or the night before, knocking on their neighbours’ doors and singing: ‘We be come a-shroving, for a piece of pancake, or a bite of bacon.’

Mr Bilton says: “Sometimes they would bring shards of crockery or stones with them to throw at householders who refused to give them anything!”

Like Easter, Shrove Tuesday occurs on a different date each year because it is calculated by the cycles of the moon. While it’s already confusing, in the early days of Christianity in Britain it was worse.

Before the 7th century there were two methods for calculating the date for Easter. One originated from Roman missionaries who established what is now Whitby Abbey. The second came from the Irish or Celtic tradition which – in the 630s – used the island of Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumberland as their chief mission centre.Whitby Abbey was where the Synod of Whitby decided, once and for all, how the date of Easter should be calculated. Both used the lunar calendar, but had two different methods of calculation. This meant that the Roman and Celtic Easters fell on entirely different dates, which caused confusion for early Christians. In 664 the Synod of Whitby declared that the Roman method would be used to establish the date for Easter, and is still used by the Church of England today.

“Meat and dairy were outlawed during Lent, but Christians could eat fish, bread and vegetables,” says Mr Bilton. “Fish was considered a virtuous food, on account of two of Jesus’ apostles being fisherman. Most of the fish consumed at this time, like herring or cod, would have been salted to preserve it. Dairy products were replaced with almond milk and butter. Spices were permitted to flavour food, but the absence of meat and dairy meant the Lenten diet could be pretty monotonous.

“Even outside of Lent, monks already had a pretty restricted diet by modern standards, thanks to the Rule of Benedict, a set of guidelines used to govern monastic life. It dictated how a monastery should be run, what the monks could wear and the amount of food provided.

“Walter Daniel, a 12th century monk from Rievaulx Abbey, described the monks’ regular diet as a pound of bread and a pint of beans daily. This was to be consumed over two meals, although from Easter to September monks were allowed a third meal during the evening.

“The Rule of Benedict forbade the consumption of meat from quadrupeds – animals with four legs – at all times during the year, so monks had a largely vegetarian diet. During Lent, their diet was even stricter. The first Monday after Lent, most monasteries observed a total fast. From the second week of Lent some monastic orders decreed that only raw vegetables and bread could be eaten.

“By the 12th century things had become more lenient. It had been decided that the rule about eating meat didn’t include birds, so things like chicken could be eaten. Even bacon and offal could be on the monks’ menu – they weren’t regarded as ‘real’ meat. Outside monasteries it was less strict and some lay-people developed liberal interpretations of what foods could be eaten during Lent. Beaver tail was allowed because these mammals live near rivers. Waterfowl, such as ducks, were cunningly dubbed ‘barnacle geese’ as it was believed these birds hatched from barnacles.”

As well as giving up “luxury” foods, the faithful were expected to forego fun pastimes like dancing and playing games. Therefore, Shrovetide, the four days preceding Lent, was a time for merriment.

A legacy of these festivities is the pancake race. Dating from around 1445, legend has it that a local woman heard the shriving bell while she was making pancakes and ran to church in her apron, still clutching her frying pan.