Shrove Tuesday: The Ultimate Excuse to Eat an Obscene Amount of Pancakes

Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday as it’s officially known, is one of those days that sneaks up on you every year. One minute you’re going about your business, the next you’re in a full-blown kitchen crisis, trying to scrape the first pancake off the ceiling while a pan full of semi-burnt batter sizzles in defiance.

At its core, this day is a farewell party for all the good stuff—sugar, eggs, butter—before the fasting of Lent begins. In the past, when people took Lent very seriously (as in, actual fasting and not just giving up chocolate), Shrove Tuesday was the last hurrah, a chance to confess sins, clear out indulgent foods, and apparently, run through the streets tossing pancakes in the air. Pancakes became the go-to dish not just because they’re easy to make, but because they used up all those soon-to-be-forbidden ingredients in a way that felt both practical and celebratory.

One of the more peculiar traditions takes place in Olney, Buckinghamshire, where the famous pancake race has been a thing since 1445. Legend has it, a woman was so deep into making pancakes that she lost track of time. When she heard the church bells ring, she dashed to the service—still clutching her frying pan. Now, every year, competitors dress in aprons and headscarves, flipping their pancakes as they sprint to the finish line. It’s ridiculous, but it’s tradition, and the British are nothing if not devoted to absurd customs. Other towns have since joined in, with competitors taking this frying pan dash very seriously, sometimes even training for weeks beforehand.

The French, being effortlessly elegant as always, skip the running and focus on Crêpes Day, which is basically Pancake Day but with a chic accent. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Americans in certain regions swap pancakes for King Cake, a colourful, icing-laden monstrosity that comes with a tiny plastic baby hidden inside. Whoever finds the baby gets to host the next party, which feels more like a punishment than a reward. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras celebrations also kick into high gear, where the last day before Lent is marked by masked revelry, parades, and some of the most extravagant street parties on the planet.

If you think flipping pancakes is a simple skill, there’s a whole world of competitive pancake tossing that would prove you wrong. The current record for the highest pancake flip stands at an absurd 9.47 metres. Imagine trying to catch that without ruining your kitchen ceiling. And then there’s the world’s largest pancake, which was cooked in Rochdale in 1994, measuring 15 metres across and weighing three tonnes. Nobody knows if they actually ate it, but considering it contained over two million calories, it probably required an entire town to finish. The UK is also home to the record for the most pancakes tossed in one minute—140 flips, an achievement that probably resulted in sore wrists and batter everywhere.

Church bells were traditionally rung on Shrove Tuesday, not to remind people to go to confession, but to tell them to drop everything and start making pancakes. In Scarborough, they take things even further by holding a mass pancake-flipping parade. It’s not a race, there’s no prize, just a coordinated march of people tossing pancakes in perfect unison because, well, why not? The sound of sizzling batter and the sight of perfectly golden pancakes flying through the air has become part of the town’s identity.

Canadians add their own twist by combining Pancake Day with ice skating races, which makes perfect sense if you live somewhere where winter never ends. If you’re going to burn off all that maple syrup, you might as well do it at high speed on frozen water. In some places, pancake breakfasts are organised by entire communities, with volunteers flipping thousands of pancakes for hungry attendees.

Despite all the religious origins and historical traditions, Shrove Tuesday is really just a great excuse to eat a ridiculous amount of pancakes. The UK alone devours an estimated 117 million pancakes on the day. That’s two per person, though anyone who’s ever made pancakes knows that stopping at two is an impossible task. In some homes, the batter keeps flowing all day, and toppings get increasingly creative as the meal progresses—from classic lemon and sugar to Nutella-laden stacks that defy structural integrity.

So, whether you’re dashing through the streets flipping pancakes, watching Mardi Gras chaos unfold, or just standing in your kitchen failing to get your batter to behave, it’s a day worth celebrating. Just remember: the first pancake is always a disaster, ceiling pancakes don’t count, and if all else fails, there’s no shame in just drenching everything in syrup and pretending it was meant to look that way.