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HOW many can you eat? As children, for many of us the highlight of Shrove Tuesday was boasting about how many pancakes we could gobble, in a magnificently contrasting display of simplicity and excess.
Alan Davidson’s The Oxford Companion to Food states that ‘an English culinary manuscript of about 1430 refers to pancakes in a way which implies that the term was already familiar, but it does not occur often in early printed cookery books. It seems to have been only in the 17th century that pancakes came to the fore in Britain’. He describes a flour-and-egg batter mixed with milk, cream or water. Wine or brandy was sometimes added, yet, by the 18th century, the tradition of making them with milk or cream predominated.