Interesting Facts About Pancakes

Pancakes are simple and delicious food. They are eaten all over the world and appear in various tastes, shapes and with different ingredients. As I like pancakes so much, I was curious about some interesting facts about them. If you want to know more about your delicious snack, in this article, you can find most interesting facts about pancakes.

Pancakes have a long history, dated back to the times of Ancient Romans and it was believed in Medieval times that the first three pancakes cooked were sacred. They were each marked with a cross before being sprinkled with salt and then set aside to ward off evil.

There are more interesting facts about pancakes. Here are some of the most interesting facts:

1. The tradition of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in almost 1000 years old.
2. On Pancake Day in Newfoundland people place items in the pancake batter before it is cooked to foretell the future for family members. If it happens that boy receives item for a trade, it means he will enter the trade but if a girls receives item from a trade, it means she will marry a person from trade.
3. Pancakes are found almost in every culture. It is a thin flat cake made from batter and fried in a pan or on a griddle. Batter is usually made from eggs, flour, milk or water, oil or melted butter. Sometimes batter can be made from buttermilk.
4. Maple syrup which is often used as a topping, was originally a sweet drink which was discovered by the Algonquin Indians. To make this drink, sap was collected from Canadian sugar maple trees and next it was boiled.
5. The first ready-mix food which was sold commercially was Aunt Jemima pancake flour. It was invented in 1889  in St. Joseph, Missouri. It wasn’t  very popular at the beginning.
6. This is a very interesting and funny fact about pancakes: It is common in France to touch the handle of the frying pan and to make a wish while the pancake is turned, holding a coin in one hand.
7. The first pancake recipe appeared in an English cookbook in the fifteenth century.
8. Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday is known as ”Carnivale’ in Italy (from the Latin for ‘goodbye to the flesh’)Fasnacht’ in Germany (night of the fast) and ‘Mardi Gras’ (literally ‘Fat Tuesday’) is celebrated in places as diverse as Brazil, New Orleans, and Australia. In Iceland the day is called  ‘Sprengidagur’ (bursting day) and is known for the tradition of eating salt, meat and peas. In Greece it is called ‘Apocreas’, which means ‘from the meat’, as it’s traditional for Greeks not to eat meat during Lent.
9. The first recorded pancake day was in Olney, Buchinghamshire in 1445 year.
10. The longest race in the quickest time was held in Melbourne in Australia. Man called Jan Stickland covered amazing 345 meters in 59.5 seconds. It was in 1985 year.
11. The largest number of pancakes tossed in the shortest amount of time in the UK is 349 tosses in 2 minutes. (Dean Gould at Felixstowe, Suffolk, 14 January 1995).
12. World’s biggest pancake was cooked in Rochdale (Greater Manchester) in 1994, which was 15 metres in diameter, weighted three tonnes and had  an estimated two million calories.
13. Word ‘shrove’ comes from the archaic English verb ‘to shrive’ which means to absolve people from their sins. In the Middle Ages it was very common for priests to hear people’s confessions to prepare them for Lent.
14. In the US, Pancake Day is commonly known as Mardi Gras. In French ‘Mardi Gras’       means Fat Tuesday.
15. Celebrity chef Aldo Zilli in 2005 year set the world record for the highest pancake toss at 329cm.
16. The French crêpe is thin and crispy. It is folded or rolled and heated in a sauce of sugar, butter, citrus juice and liqueur.
17. Russian blins are usually prepared with buckwheat and they are thin, crispy pancakes served with caviar and sour cream or folded and filled with jam and cream cheese.
18. One pancake fan ran a marathon while continually tossing a pancake for three hours, two minutes and twenty seven seconds.
19. In 1986 was hold an event called World’s Largest Pancake Breakfast. It was revived for the 350th anniversary of Massachusetts. This breakfast has been held every year since then and hundreds of volunteers help during this event. An amazing number of 71,233 serving of pancakes were served to more than 40 thousand people in 1999.

Of course those were just some of the facts about pancakes and I will provide more and post them here in the future.