Hertfordshire
At Baldock, Shrove Tuesday is long anticipated by the children, who designate it Dough-Nut-Day; it being usual to make a good store of small cakes fried in hog’s lard, placed over the fire in a brass skillet, called dough-nuts, with which the young people are plentifully regaled.—Brand, Pop. Antiq., 1849, vol. i. p. 83.
At Hoddesdon, in the same county, the old curfew-bell, which was anciently rung in that town for the extinction and relighting of “all fire and candle-light,” still exists, and has from time immemorial been regularly rang on the morning of Shrove Tuesday at four o’clock, after which hour the inhabitants are at liberty to make and eat pancakes until the bell rings again at eight o’clock at night. So closely is this custom observed, that after that hour not a pancake remains in the town.—Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 242.