Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

On Shrove Tuesday, February 5, from 5 to 7 p.m., the St. Matthew's choir will host its annual pancake supper, with proceeds to benefit the St. Matthew's music ministry.

Now, you might think this is just another ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, church basement pancake supper, but you'd be wrong. Nosiree, brothers and sisters, this is a supercalifragilisticexpealidotious pancake supper!

It will feature world-famous, secret-recipe Choircakes ¹ and a veritable cornucopia of gourmet toppings, accompanied by Italian cappuccino. For only $8 for adults, and $5 for school-aged children (under 5 free), you can enjoy a feast worthy of royalty!

¹ The story of the secret Choircake recipe (as much as we can reveal) is recounted below the poster.

The Story of Choircakes

The recipe for Choircakes is of pre-Christian Celtic origin, a secret closely guarded by Celtic priestesses.  Eating pancakes was part of a mysterious Celtic whistling and chanting ritual associated with the goddess Brigid. The cakes themselves were so exquisitely light and sumptuous that they were said to induce a state of blissful rapture in which one communed with the Goddess herself.  The ritual was practiced throughout Celtic Europe, and in fact, the image of the enraptured supplicant above is taken from a cave painting in the hills above Largesse, a village in southern Provence.

As Christianity took hold in Celtic Europe, the pancake ritual went underground, practiced in secret chambers under churches and abbeys (which is why pancake suppers are now held in church basements). The ritual was abandoned in the 4th century when Viking raiders sacked the abbey of Pillsbury in North Yorkshire and made off with the secret recipe.

For several centuries thereafter, the complete recipe was highly prized and guarded by warring Viking chieftains.  Partial, inferior recipes made their way among commoners and gave rise (as it were) to the tradition of Swedish pancakes.  Sometime in the 11th century, the recipe, which had traded hands several times, was lost.

Our story picks up again in 1937, when a German immigrant farmer, Max Zscheile, was plowing his field near Effie, Minnesota.  His plow struck a stone with odd, carved glyphs on it.  Not realizing that the stone actually contained Viking rune script, Zscheile traded the stone for chewing tobacco and minnows at Don's Bait and Tackle in Effie.

The stone remained at Don's for several decades until our own choirmaster and noted music scholar, J Michael Compton, encountered it while researching his groundbreaking work, Rune Tunes: Viking War Chants and Show Tunes.  After Michael purchased the stone and translated the runes, he understood that he had found an ancient pancake recipe. When he tested the recipe, he realized that he had uncovered the long-fabled complete recipe for Brigid's pancakes.  And it is these pancakes that are made, only once a year, on Shrove Tuesday at St. Matthew's.