Tonight across the country there will be pancake parties, pancake races, pancake disasters…! (Or if you’re like me, you got your flabby pancake failures out of the way last night, perfected for today!)

The history of Shrove Tuesday is the ‘feast before the fast’, coming the day before Lent begins, in the Christian Calendar. The expression “Shrove Tuesday” comes from the word shrive, meaning “confess“. Shrove Tuesday is observed by many Christians, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Roman Catholics.

The earliest records of pancakes appears in the …