If you were to walk through Rochdale town centre on Shrove Tuesday, you’d be greeted by casual mumblings and murmurs from locals about a 15 metre-thick pancake.
While it may sound like a thing of local legend, Rochdale really is the birthplace of the World’s Largest Pancake - a record it’s proudly held onto since one momentous occasion in 1994.
But how did Rochdale become involved in this massive feat and, well, why?
"Batter" down the hatches, pancake fans, because it’s about to get flipping wild…
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The idea of conjuring up the world’s largest pancake came from bosses at The Co-operative Union Ltd to celebrate 150 years in the borough.
Plans were put in motion for the feat to take place on August 13, 1994 - despite being a good six months out from Shrove Tuesday.
On the day, more than 40,000 people gathered at Rochdale town centre to witness the creation of the large dish.
Working flat-out, a tanker poured pancake mixture into a 50ft pan - alongside a very generous helping of The Co-Op’s own-brand milk, of course - as locals watched on in awe.
The mixture took hours to cook with a group of chefs tossing and turning throughout the day.
At the same time, experts from the Guinness World Records watched every movement diligently to ensure everything was being done to procedure.
A mechanical operation was required where large cranes were used to flip the huge pancake in order to ensure both sides were cooked evenly.
When finished, the pancake weighed three tonnes - the same weight as a baby blue whale or three polar bears, if you must know.
The pancake also had a surface area of 1,905 sq ft, which is 53 per cent bigger than the internal size of an average detached house.
The flipping ginormous treat also measured 15.01 metres in diameter and was an inch deep.
Some say it was enough to make pancake purists feel a little bit crepe-d out.
The finished pancake was then dusted off with lemon and sugar, which perhaps wasn’t as much of a controversial choice back then in 1994 as it would be today.
After Guinness experts confirmed it was in fact the world’s largest pancake, it was cut up and divided into 15,000 individual portions.
Each slice was then sold off at 25p to raise money for local charities.
Posting on the Rochdale Living Memories Facebook page, one person ever-so-fondly panned the pancake’s flavour: “It was edible, but rather disgusting.”
In the 28 years since, many have tried but failed to topple Rochdale’s pancake record.
Other pancake records broken, however, include the most people to toss pancakes at the same time which was achieved in Sheffield in 2012 thanks to 890 willing participants.
The largest serving of pancakes was achieved last year by a supermarket in Blue Springs, Missouri, USA.
The company made 13,000 pancakes in just seven hours, before donating them to a local food bank.
Now that kind of puts our own pancake efforts to shame...
