A few pancake facts to impress your fellow Shrove Tuesday diners
The most expensive pancake ever sold was created by a Manchester hotel in 2014 and included lobster, champagne and caviar and was yours for just £800.
The world’s largest pancake also originated from Manchester. Made in 1994 it weighed a whopping three tonnes and had to be flipped and edible to qualify. At 15 metres in diameter there was definitely enough to go around.
The French have some unique traditions when it comes to crepes. Some families throw the first crepe of the year at a wardrobe and if it sticks you have to leave it there for 12 months. A quicker update than a lick of paint, we suppose.
The first pancake race happened in Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1445 and was for ladies only. The annual race is still going strong and will take place on 25 February this year.
When it comes to pancake records Dominic ‘Mike’ Cuzzacrea holds two separate crowns. In 1999 he completed a marathon at Niagara Falls in 3 hours, 2 minutes, and 27 seconds while battling winds and flipping the pancake once every 1.8 seconds for the duration of the entire race. He also holds the record for highest pancake toss of 9.47 metres in 2010, beating previous record holder, celebrity chef Aldo Zilli.
And finally, if you want to know how to flip a pancake without getting it stuck to the ceiling, the good people of Newcastle University’s STEM blog have worked it out for you: To flip a pancake a metre in the air we need a launch velocity of 4.4 metres per second. If our launch velocity is over 6 metres per second however, our pancake will get stuck to the ceiling! We also have to be fast to catch the pancake as it falls back down or we could be left with pancake on the floor! For a flip of a metre we only have 0.9 of a second to catch our pancake. We can calculate the air time (t) of our pancake using the following equation: t = 2v/g
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