PANCAKE DAY, or Shrove Tuesday as it is traditionally known, is commonly seen as a time to consume as many pancakes as possible while celebrating in style.

Whether you have them sweet or savoury, with lemon and sugar or ham and cheese, there are many ways to enjoy these pan made treats.

But what some people may not know is that Pancake Day has a long and storied past.

Here are the facts about Shrove Tuesday.

1. Shrove Tuesday was originally conceived as a way to use up all the fatty foods in your cupboards before the start of Lent.

2. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, and Pancake Day always falls seven weeks before Easter, meaning it falls on a different day every year.

3. The tradition of marking the start of Lent in this way dates back to as far back as 1000AD.

4. In many cases Shrove Tuesday often falls on the same day as Mardi Gras, a carnival-like celebration usually held before Ash Wednesday and celebrated all over the world.

5. In many countries, Poland for example, the equivalent to Shrove Tuesday is called Fat Thursday.

Instead of making pancakes, the day is usually celebrated by the making and consuming of doughnuts.

We will leave it to you to decide which day sounds more delicious.

6. The first pancake recipes noted down in a cookbook can be found in books from the 15th century.

7. Online information website Wikipedia has noted every Shrove Tuesday date from now until the end of the century.

Pancake Day in the year 2100 falls on February 9.

8. The record for the largest pancake every made and successfully flipped was 15 metres wide, 2.5 centimetres thick and weighed more than 6,600 pounds (roughly 472 stone).

9. In Britain, it is estimated that we consume a colossal 52 million eggs on Pancake Day, that’s 22 million more than any other day of the year.

10. It is traditional in many towns across the country to mark Pancake Day with a pancake race.

The oldest recorded pancake race in the UK takes place every year in Olney, Buckinghamshire and dates back as far as 1445.