PANCAKES FROM HELL Why Eating Pancakes on Mardi Gras Can Save Your Soul

By Kathy Bradshaw

Nothing makes Fat Tuesday fatter than stuffing yourself with piles of pancakes

When Fat Tuesday comes around, you’re probably focusing on where to catch the parades or what to put in your go-cup. You’re most likely not thinking about the fact that Carnival season is about to end in a fit of booze and sequins. That the fun will soon be over with nothing to show for it but a bag full of plastic trinkets and a house full of glitter. And you’re surely not thinking about pancakes.

But Mardi Gras Day is also the day before Lent begins. It’s Ash Wednesday Eve. Plus, it’s Pancake Day. So in many places around the world, Mardi Gras is more butter and syrup than it is floats and coconuts.

In religious realms, Fat Tuesday is also known as Shrove Tuesday, so-named for the custom of shriving. This involves confessing one's sins, repenting, and seeking forgiveness. A less-festive equivalent of Carnival, the period leading up to Shrove Tuesday and Lent is therefore otherwise known as Shrovetide. If someone is wouldn’t keep for 40 days, including butter, eggs, and fat.

So someone had the brilliant idea of using those perishable animal products to make pancakes—because, after all, this is also a day of feasting, a syrupy swan song before the Lenten days of deprivation. And Pancake Day has been a tradition ever since.

Some people even believe that the various pancake ingredients have a religious significance: Eggs symbolize creation or the resurrection, flour represents the staff of life, milk is purity, and salt is wholesomeness. And, they say, the 40 days of Lent are meant to symbolize the length of time that Jesus spent in the desert while fasting and resisting the temptation of Satan (and also, of pancakes).

To celebrate Shrove Tuesday, it’s customary for many churches to hold pancake breakfasts. The church bells chime that morning to call pancake-loving worshippers to come to confession before bell” is a signal that it’s time for both faith and flapjacks.

Another Shrove Tuesday tradition dates back to approximately 1445 in Olney, Buckinghamshire, in central England. The story goes that a woman was making pancakes at home in her kitchen, in honor of Pancake Day. She was caught with her hands in the batter when the church bells began to toll, announcing the start of the morning service. Knowing that she would be terribly late and prioritizing prayer before pancakes, she bolted out the door, skillet still in hand and apron around her waist, and raced to the church.

Ever since then, many towns throughout England hold pancake races every Mardi Gras Day. To remain true to history, racers in Olney must be female, wear an apron, and flip a pancake in a frying pan as they run through the streets.

A small Kansas town

International Pancake Day, Liberal and Olney go head-to-head, competing on either side of the pond to see which of their runners completes the 415-yard pancake shuffle in the least amount of time.

Many cultures have their own variety of Shrove Tuesday delicacy—there are blinis in Belarus, pączki in Poland, and malasadas in Madeira, for instance. Even though some typical Pancake Day foods around the world are more donut than they are pancake, donuts are technically just a plumper version of a pancake, are they not? Even the pancakes on Fat Tuesday can be fat.

Back in New Orleans, the Mardi Gras go-to meal is almost always Popeyes rather than pancakes, but there’s no reason not to include a little battery goodness on the menu as well. Who doesn’t love pancakes? Actually, a mere 6% don’t.

Besides, eating pancakes on Pancake Day means that you get to enjoy America’s favorite breakfast and hangover treat, while also being forgiven for all of your unholy trespasses—clean plate, clean slate. Because nothing says repentance like scarfing down a steaming stack of hotcakes. (Put blueberries in them if you’ve been especially sinful.)

Happy Mardi Gras. And may your Fat Tuesday be filled with booze, beads, and Bisquick.