From Christine Bate’s document titled FOOD.doc
FOOD
Contents: Shrove Tuesday, Christmas puddings, simnel cake
This section is an extension of the Holiday section but it addresses seasonal foods eaten for holidays or other occasions.
SHROVE TUESDAY
Although the day is known more generally as Mardi Gras in the US, I had never heard that term until I was an adult. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday when Lent begins and when, a long time ago, it was customary to be shriven at church by going to confession. On the same day all the foods that could not be eaten during Lent while fasting were eaten up.
Hence its common name in England: Pancake Day. It must be that in England, people did not have the same wide variety of forbidden foods on hand that observers of Mardi Gras had.
When I was at Brinsworth Council School, we had a half day holiday on Shrove Tuesday. Possibly it was a recognition that all the children would be so full of pancakes that it was a waste of time to try to teach them in the afternoon. It seems to me that this was the time of year when everyone played whip-and-tops and I remember playing “round the back” on the area of asphalt behind the house, colouring my top with chalks so that it made a pretty pattern as it spun.
English pancakes are almost like crepes: a little more substantial than crepes but not like American pancakes that are made with a thicker batter. They are made in a regular size frying pan so that they fit nicely on a dinner plate and are eaten one-at-a-time. You squeeze lemon or orange juice onto them, sprinkle them with sugar, and roll them up. The preferred rolling method is to insert the tine of your fork at the edge of the pancake and then roll it up by rotating the fork. Then use a dessert spoon and fork to cut up the rolled pancake and eat.
I was never aware of Ash Wednesday, nor did I know of any pancake races that feature on the news now. It was just not part of our tradition.
CHRISTMAS
Preparations for Christmas food began well before December 25th. The Christmas puddings had to be made in good time and traditionally, house wives who heard the Collect of the Day in church on the last Sunday before Advent heard the words “Stir up” at the beginning of the prayer and either congratulated themselves that they were already prepared or made a mental note to do something about it right away. Unfortunately, in the new Episcopal Prayer Book, this collect has been moved to the last Sunday in Advent, just before Christmas and no longer serves as a reminder of “Stir up Sunday”.
Now, today, in 2003 I made the simnel cake, the traditional cake for Easter Sunday, and there are now only two weeks left in Lent. The cake has to have time to mature before I put on it the top layer of almond paste to complement the layer embedded in the middle of the cake and cooked there. Delicious. These traditional foods for special days are very important to me and so in two weeks time, I will put on the almond paste, make a nest in the centre and roughen the perimeter with a fork before browning the top under the grill. A break with tradition for my generation is to use Cadbury’s chocolate eggs with a pastel sugary outer coat in the nest instead of making almong paste eggs. Of course, the cake is finished by putting a cake frill around the sides.
More about other traditional foods. The usual meals we had such as stew, broth, steamed puddings, pork butchery.
THE INVENTION OF DETERGENT
PROVIDING HOT WATER IN THE SUMMER