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Candlemas and Mardi Gras
In Normandy, pancakes have always been famous and Ducange notes it "The peasants of Normandy, he says, call pancakes, flour and eggs, fried in a pan". Very often, moreover, in Normandy, the Candlemas or Mardi-Gras crêpes are called pan-fried. Under the vast fireplace of the country house, the farmer's wife or the housewife, who prepared her well-loosened dough formed of eggs, good butter, sometimes milk, but without the white wine, appearing in the recipes of the Middle Ages, in the pan previously greased with butter or lard, pour while turning and starting with the edges, the dough of the pan. With a skilful flick of the wrist on the tail of the pan, she pops the pancake, when it's done, and turns it over quickly to be fried on the other side. Everyone, laughing, tries to turn the pancakes too: the farmer, the men and sometimes the children, who half catch her or let the too-burnt pancake fall back into the fire. And there are mocking laughs at each clumsiness of… the one who does not know how to hold the tail of the pan! In Normandy, pancakes were of such frequent use that there were different kinds of pans and saucepans for sautéing pan-fried, pancakes and crêpets and crêpelets. It was the tile, the tieulle, a very low and very flat pan, easy to handle.
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