With Shrove Tuesday on February 5, only one in five Britons questioned in late January knew the day was looming and only 27% of households planned to make pancakes. The poll shows more than two-thirds said they would either ignore the tradition or make only a half-hearted effort to mark the occasion. Shrove Tuesday represents the feast day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, and is traditionally the last opportunity to use eggs and fats before the 40-day Lenten fast leading to Easter.
McDougalls, the flour manufacturer, commissioned the poll. Mark Wilkinson, who runs the McDougalls flour mill in Andover, Hampshire, said: “Up until the ,90’s most households would flip a few pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. But it seems that fewer and fewer people can be bothered these days.Ž
One of the problems may be a lack of basic pancake-making skills. Only one in three people say they are “very confidentŽ about what goes into pancake batter and only one in five say they are confident pancake flippers. The poll claims that the age group most likely to mark Pancake Day enthusiastically is 18 to 24 year olds. The group most likely to ignore the tradition, surprisingly, is the over 55s. McDougalls sent out teams of flipping experts on to the streets last week to show how it is done. Wilkinson said: “Pancake day is one of the ultimate family meal occasions so we need to take action to keep the tradition alive.Ž
Pancake day is a moveable feast, falling 47 days before Easter Sunday, the date of which is set according to a complex astronomical formula. Last week was the earliest Pancake Day for years, catching many by surprise. The pancake is featured in cookbooks as far back as 1439 and the tradition of tossing or flipping them dates back at least as far as the 17th century.
Pancake tossing is a serious pastime for some. Ralf Laue from Leipzig broke the world record by tossing a pancake 416 times in two minutes, while Mike Cuzzacrea ran a marathon while tossing a pancake for 3 hours, 2 mins and 27 sec. The world‘s biggest pancake was cooked in Rochdale in 1994. It was 15 metres in diameter, weighed 3 tonnes packed with an estimated 2m calories.
