Origin Stories:
Shrove Tuesday
For those conversant with the Christian calendar, ‘Shrove Tuesday’ (aka ‘Fat Tuesday’ or ‘Mardi Gras’) marks the last day before the beginning of Lent. For those less observant with the religious aspects, it’s perhaps more commonly, known as ‘Pancake Day’: a tradition shared by many who otherwise have no skin in this game – spiritually speaking.
‘Shrove’ is a derivative of the verb to ‘shrive’ – meaning that those who follow exact rules of engagement will be planning to make confession about now in the interests of being shriven (absolved) from their sins before committing to a period of abstention from the indulgence – traditionally speaking – in the luxuries of meat and dairy, alongside a few fun activities that may more normally be their bag.
Temptations
In the run up to this period, all temptation – so tradition once again decrees – needs be removed from the house in prescribed order – meat preceding dairy. Shrove Tuesday is the day when eggs, milk and butter are due to be eaten up – and beaten up – as the three ingredients essentially required for a majority of ‘pancakes’, and in order to remove all last vestiges of their temptations from the home.
Tossers v Flippers
In terms of how you make, eat, or understand the possibilities of pancakes, there are a variety of ways of imagining them. Flat, dinner plate sized, ‘crêpe’ styles are often a first port of call, and are delicious rolled or folded with lemon juice and sugar. They are often flipped with the flourish of a practiced pan handler – our Creative Director, Hayley is an avowed champion pancake tosser (she’s won prizes for this skill) – I choose an alternative method of a well-positioned palette knife to lift and flip, on the basis that the risks of tossing are outweighed by the consistency of a more controlled turn – but let’s not dwell here for any further analysis, lest it proves the basis for any kind of psychological test for either of us!
A Shared Recipe
Recipes for simple pancakes – French, American, or UK/Scotch ‘dropped’ style – are abundantly available. We’ve crossed the Pond for our inspiration, and we’re ‘colab-ing’ this year with Vaughn Vreeland – he doesn’t know it, but we don’t think he’ll mind us linking to his NYT YouTube where he shares his findings on the secret to “Perfect Fluffy Pancakes” (embedded below).
Scroll down, if you’re short on time, and simply require ingredients and method for both ‘everyday’ and ‘elevated’ versions. We’ve transcribed the basics, with UK translations on weights and measures. We have made these in the showroom on at least one previous fat tuesday (perfect timing for breakfast at our weekly staff meeting) – the deal is that we show you ours and we’d love to see yours – you can find us or tag us on Instagram at @day_true.
Recipe:
“Perfect Fluffy Pancakes” (as first tested by Vaughn, from a Mark Bittman Original)
Ingredients …
… with translations from US volumetrics, as required.
- 2 cups (280g) all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar (optional/“not optional!” ~ VV)
- 2 eggs
- 1½ – 2 cups (350ml – 475ml) milk
- 2 tablespoons melted and cooled butter (plus butter for cooking, or a neutral oil)
Ingredients + tips …
… for a ‘super fluffy’ version, with additional flavour
- Separate the eggs
- Substitute buttermilk for milk (you may need to the full 2 cups (475ml) or, alternatively, (to emulate the effects of the buttermilk) use milk + either: 1 tablespoon lemon juice, or a generous spoonful of sour cream or plain yoghurt
- Substitute ½ teaspoon of baking soda for the same quantity of the baking powder
- Add 1 tsp vanilla essence
Basic Method
- Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl (flour, baking powder, salt, sugar)
- Mix wet ingredients together in a pourable jug or small bowl (eggs, milk, melted butter)
- Make a well in the dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients into dry just until you have a largely homogenised batter (don’t overwork) – Vaughn says not to be afraid of any lumps – they not only have their uses (suspending blueberries, should you choose to add them, and keeping the batter ‘contained’ on the pan), but they help avoid any over development of the gluten in the flour.
- The batter should be ‘droppable’ – if too thick, add a little more milk.
Elevated Method …
… for super fluffy version: add these additional steps
- Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks, set aside
- Add yolks to the milk as for previous recipe, add the vanilla essence to these wet ingredients.
- Make the batter as before.
- Once the batter is mixed, fold in the egg whites
Cooking
- Heat a griddle pan or skillet until it is smoking hot (190ºC is recommended by Bora for pancakes on their teppan plate – Day True note: we found this a little low and settled at 200ºC or 210ºC – depending on how fast the pancakes were cooking).
- Grease griddle/skillet/teppan with butter or oil – don’t over-oil.
- when it shimmers, drop ladleful’s of batter onto griddle (etc), wait for the dropped batter to show bubbles rising and bursting on its surface, then turn them as the bottoms of the pancakes brown.
- Cook on the flip side for enough time to turn light golden brown, then stack them up and serve them with butter, jam, fruit and/or maple syrup – or other toppings that will indulge your personal temptations.
NB: If you want to wait until the entire batch is cooked before you serve, keep the batches warm on an oven-proof plate in an oven set to a low temperature (between 30ºC and 60ºC) – on a humid setting if it has one. Day True note: When serving, it helps to keep the pancakes covered with a clean tea-towel on the plate – keeps the heat in and stops them from drying out.
Shrove Tuesday ‘live’ Morning Update (2025)
We went with an adapted elevated version – we used milk because we couldn’t find buttermilk in our Tesco Metro (although they surprised us by having plenty of their finest Maple Syrup). We used our Bora teppan – which was a dream – housing eight large pancakes at a time: we managed to whip up and cook a full batch before our 10am morning meeting. All the washing up went into our VZug dishwasher, and our VZug compact oven kept the p’cakes fresh and warm at a steady 60ºC (humid) while we cooked the batches.
