With Pancake Day fast approaching, let’s go back in time to look at the history of the humble dish.

Recipes from the first published cookbooks show that in England, pancakes were made very thinly – hence the phrase “flat as a pancake” – from lots of wet ingredients that were forbidden during the impending pre-Easter Lenten Fast. Eggs, cream, butter and animal fats are all products from which people were meant to abstain, alongside all other meats.

It makes sense, then, that the dish, generally eaten year-round, became associated with Shrovetide – the days before Lent – when cooks wanted to clear out their pantries to avoid temptation in the long fast before Easter.

Early pancakes were cooked until crispy and served warm with butter and sprinkled with sugar.

It’s common to see a recipe in old cookbooks that used ale, much like the coating of beer-battered fish we’re familiar with today. One recipe from a book published in the reign of Elizabeth I is a rich affair which mixes:

A pint of thick cream 4 or 5 egg yolks A handful of flour 2 or 3 spoonfuls of ale

A pint of thick cream 4 or 5 egg yolks A handful of flour 2 or 3 spoonfuls of ale

This is seasoned with “a good handful of sugar, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a touch of ginger”.

The batter is set aside while the cook takes a knob of butter “as big as your thumb” in a frying pan and heats it until it is “molten brown”. Now tip the fat out and ladle the batter into the tilted pan as thinly as possible over a low heat. Flip when one side is “baked” and cook the other until the pancake is as dry (crispy) as possible, but not burned.

English poet and writer Gervais Markham’s........

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