Mardi Gras Means Pancakes…
Ok, not really… Mardi Gras actually means Fat Tuesday, or more precisely, Fat Mars-day. The Romans dedicated the second day of the week to the planet named for their war god, Mars. The closest Norse equivalent to Mars was Tyr, or Tiw. Hence it became Tuesday in English and Mardi Gras translates into Fat Tuesday.
The “Tuesday” is important because this is the day before Ash Wednesday, however it’s the “fat” that is more significant. This is the day that all the fat needed to be used up before the Lenten fast. A traditional recipe for using up that fat is pancakes. Hence all the pancake suppers on Mardi Gras.
Christians fast in Lent which begins on Ash Wednesday, the morning after Mardi Gras. Not everyone follows the same dietary restrictions, but it was and still is common to give up meat and the fat that comes with it. Of course, there was not much meat to give up at this time of year for traditional cultures living in northern climates. So there may have been an element of making a virtue out of necessity. But the result of giving fat up for the six weeks of Lent is that what was in the pantry on Fat Tuesday had to be used up or it would go rancid.
There are many ways to use a large quantity of lard in one day, but there is one recipe that people turn to again and again — pancakes! In fact, eating griddle cakes in the spring may predate Lent. For example, in Scotland oatcakes have long been associated with Candlemas and seem to derive from the holiday’s agricultural traditions, not Christianity. Even today, pancakes and other fried dough disks are eaten with abandon at this time of year without any reference to the Lenten fast — though the best community pancake suppers happen on Fat Tuesday. And in New England Fat Tuesday often coincides with the perfect complement to pancakes — fresh maple syrup!
Usually about this time of year the maple trees all around New England become festooned in bright tubing. Farmers spend the beginning of the year, sometimes even December, drilling dozens of holes throughout the sugarbush and threading trees together. It isn’t as romantic as the old-timey, hanging-bucket pictures on all the syrup bottles, but it’s much easier to maintain and keep clean. The trees are tapped (meaning a small hole is drilled down to the inner bark) and a spile is inserted. The spile is connected to rubber hose that joins many trees together in a collection network. The sap runs through the tubing to a large tub that only needs emptying once or twice in a season, rather than every few hours as with the buckets at peak sap flow.
Of course, if you’re making your own syrup from a few trees — especially if your sugarbush consists of solitary trees spread over a large area — the buckets are better. Buckets are cheaper both to buy initially and to maintain. There is less material and energy use though you have to expend more energy. Still, the whole production is more human scale. The tapping process for buckets is the same, but the spile should have a hook on it to hold the bucket. Be prepared to empty your buckets often, and you’ll need to have clean storage containers to hold the sap until you have enough to boil down, “enough” being entirely up to you. It will take hours, perhaps a full day, to boil the sap into syrup no matter the sap volume. Get the most out of those hours by boiling it all at once.
If you want to start making syrup and sugar, most hardware and garden centers in places with maple trees will sell tapping and collecting equipment. Here is the catalog for the CDL Maple Sugaring Equipment, the gold standard of sugaring supplies. They have dealers all over sugar country. The Vermont Evaporator Company in Montpelier (a woman-owned business) has evaporators for any scale operation at very reasonable prices. You can also use a heavy bottomed pan that is wide and not especially deep. But you probably don’t want to do this in your kitchen. You will come out of that experience with maybe a quart or two of syrup and a kitchen absolutely covered in the sticky residue of steaming sap. Also most kitchen cooking surfaces are not ideally suited to boiling down sap since they have small and discreet heating areas. What you need a broad surface of even heat on the entire bottom of the pan. In fact, the only advantage of boiling in the kitchen is that it is indoors. Not something to sniff at in March. Hence most sugar boilers build a sugar shack that can shelter human bodies, keep the wood dry (because it’s almost always wood burning), and can tolerate a coating of sugar on everything.
The process for making sugar is about the same as for syrup, it just takes longer and far more active stirring. Those of you who have made taffy or hard candy know that you will wear your arm out stirring. This is one type of boiling that you want to do in a pot because it’s just too difficult to rapidly stir a broad surface, especially for a long time. And it takes a long time. You will swear that nothing is changing, that your candy thermometer is undoubtedly wrong, that unseen gremlins are pouring water into the pot while you blink… and you will endeavor to not blink. But then suddenly a phase shift comes over the pot and it turns from hot taffy into wet sand. But keep stirring a bit more, because you want to get all the water out. Most people will do this starting out with syrup, rather than sap. A quart of syrup will yield about 2 pounds of sugar that can be stored in airtight containers where it will keep essentially forever.
Why make maple sugar? First it tastes much better. It has a finer grain than cane sugar and therefore produces better pastries and cakes (if you’re into such things). But the most important thing is that cane sugar is just horrid. In its refined state, that which is sold in supermarkets, it is super bad for your body. Not much better than poison. It is produced through the misery of thousands of people, mostly women and children. It is shipped all around the world, racking up an enormous oil budget. And it ruins farmland.
Anyway… maple sugar is superior… In fact, The Old Farmer’s Almanac says that a quarter-cup of maple syrup (which, admittedly, is a lot) contains more calcium that the same amount of milk and more potassium that a banana. You don’t see those kind of statistics with cane sugar!
Native Americans have been tapping and boiling maple sap for at least hundreds if not thousands of years. There is an ancient tale of Nanabozho, the Anishanaabe trickster, and maple syrup. Long ago, sap flowed from the maple trees as pure syrup, free sweetness for the taking. Nanabozho decided this was way too easy, that the people did not appreciate the free gift. He thought hard work would make the people more grateful. So he diluted the sap with water, leaving merely a trace of sweetness. The people then had to boil off all the water to get to the sugar — quite a lot of water. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Nanabozho truly made us work for that sweetness.
Native Americans made maple sugar from the sap, rather than syrup, so they really cooked out all the water. They stored large blocks of the sugar in special birch-bark boxes. Sugar is easier to cook with, easier to transport and store, and I suspect it lasts longer than syrup — provided the ants can be kept out.
Incidentally, there are other trees that can be tapped for sweet sap, but maple is the most concentrated sap. For example it takes somewhere around 110 to 200 gallons of sweet birch sap to make a gallon of syrup. That said, if you’re up for the work and have access to a large number of trees, the taste is divine. It’s a softer sweetness with a minty overlay; it can only be described as winter air. You’re not likely to ever find it for sale. However, there are birch beers that will give you an impression of the syrup’s flavor.
Since tapping a tree is literally taking its life-blood, choose your sugarbush trees wisely. Tap mature trees, those with a diameter of at least a foot measured at a height of five feet above the ground. I’ve seen some old trees covered in buckets, but most people will drill no more than three holes per tree per year. When using the tube-collection method, there is normally just one insertion in the tree; and to my eyes it seems that these tap-holes are reused year to year though it’s commonly recommended that you drill at least 6” away from previous holes. In old sugarbushes, the maple trees bear evidence of tapping all around the trunk; it doesn’t seem like people reused holes.
Sugar season is not set in time. It can begin as early as December or as late as the end of March. It’s the weather that is important. The trees need to experience warm days — a few degrees above freezing — so sap will flow. But nights must be cold. This daily variation in temperature creates pressure differentials which makes flow volumes that are high enough to keep the tap hole from drying and healing over. Further, once the tree starts photosynthesizing, the sap turns bitter. This bitterness is the tree’s defense from sap-suckers of all kinds, including us. So when the buds open, it’s definitely time to turn off the tap. It’s said that when the spring peepers start singing, tapping season is over. Many sugar producers will finish the season with the so-named “frog run”, the last sap collected before spring begins in earnest.
This year has been difficult for Vermont maple producers. The deep snow has interfered with tapping, though it has happened slowly and with a few mishaps here and there. Now, we’re all waiting on those warm afternoons to trigger sap flow. People are starting to worry that we’re going from daytime high temperatures of around 15°F straight into spring warmth where it never freezes at night. The sap pump might never get going before budding season and singing frogs. Last year looked difficult at first also, but then it turned out about average which, relative to the two preceding bad years, was pretty good. There were several warm stretches in January and February that made for short runs here and there, and there were a few high wind events that took out many trees, but overall Vermont yields were up 20% over 2023. So we’re not giving up hope. We could still hit average. The forecast is for 40s next week.
But then it was the same for this past week… and that did not happen…
If you want to make pancakes to go with your syrup or your spring Ba’ games, don’t go with the American sweet flapjack recipe. Traditional recipes are more savory, being focused on using up fats not sugar. Sweet pancakes also tend to compete with syrup flavor. So here is a more traditional recipe, one that would not be out of place in a Shrovetide pancake supper. The base of this recipe is a simple oatmeal pancake, but I’ve added walnuts and caramelized onions. Because…
Onion-Walnut Oakcakes
Ingredients
4 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
4 Tbs olive oil or melted butter
2 Tbs maple syrup or honey
1 medium red onion, minced fine
1 cup walnuts, broken into small pieces
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Instructions
First, if you don’t have buttermilk, here is how you get around that. In a 4-cup measuring cup, combine 2 cups of whole milk with 2-4 Tbs of cider vinegar or the juice of one whole lemon. I’ve even used cooking sherry to great effect. Stir together well, then let this stand for at least 15 minutes. Which is just about the time you will need to prep the onion and walnuts.
Mince the onion. Then sauté in a small pan coated with a bit of butter or olive oil. Cook until the onion is translucent and most of it is browned. Some blackening is just fine.
While the onion is cooking, chop up the walnuts. You want pea-sized or smaller bits. You can use a knife, but I like putting the nuts under a sheet of parchment and smashing them with a rolling pin. Keeps the mess contained and takes seconds.
When the onion is done, transfer it to a heat-tolerant bowl. Then toast the walnuts in the pan you used for cooking the onion. I get the walnuts just hot enough to smell, then I take the pan off the heat and set it aside to finish the toasting, stirring the nuts occasionally. I will usually pour the onions back into this pan and wash the onion bowl.
Next, beat the eggs in a large bowl. You want them fluffy, but not firm.
Add the rest of the liquid ingredients and stir to combine well.
In a small bowl, stir together the dry ingredients.
Add the dry ingredients to the liquids a bit at a time, stirring smooth after each addition.
Then gently fold in the walnuts and onions.
Let this mixture stand for 15-20 minutes to soften the oats.
While that happens, you can wash up the first round of dishes. Then, warm a skillet or griddle that has been lightly oiled. You want it hot enough that a bit of water sprinkled on the surface will dance around and cook off quickly.
Put a heat-tolerant platter in the oven and turn the oven to warm, preferably less than 225°F. If it’s really dry, sometimes I will put a shallow pan of warm water in the oven to keep the pancakes moist while I am cooking.
Using a quarter cup measure, smoothly and evenly pour the pancake batter in a circle on the hot griddle. You could make bigger pancakes, but it’s harder to turn them — unless you have a wide spatula. Your flipping tool should be almost as wide as the pancake or you end up with a mess. (Or I do anyway… maybe you can do that pan flip thing… though that doesn’t work so well with a handleless griddle.)
You can do as many pancakes as will fit in the pan with each round.
When there are bubbles on the surface of the batter, then it is time to flip the pancake over. It almost always takes longer to cook the first side than the second, so be ready. I usually give it two rounds on both sides to make sure that the interior is solid without burning the exterior.
When the pancake is well cooked, transfer it to the warm platter in the oven.
Then repeat this until you have no more batter, being sure to keep the pan somewhat oiled. This recipe is low in sugar, but it still might stick. Also… using up the fat is the point…
This recipe makes about a dozen medium-sized pancakes. Most people will recommend serving them hot off the griddle, but if you need to get to the Ba’ game you can wrap them in parchment or a lint- free towel and take them to-go.
This recipe goes very well with maple syrup. I also use a dab or so of yogurt and a sprinkling of chive when serving up a sit-down meal.
Pancakes keep very well. You can put them in the fridge in an air-tight container and eat them for a week or more. I make pancakes that are small enough to fit in my toaster and then use that to quickly heat them back up. You can also freeze them. Wrapped well, they will keep in the freezer for up to a year. If they are left alone that long…
But I suspect you will be eating them all as soon as you cook them. That too is the point of this exercise.
Happy Shrovetide!
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 