Egg Rolls
One cup of milk, one cup of water, two cups flour, two eggs. Beat white and yolks separately, then beat them together a long time, a little salt. Drop a piece of butter into each tin before putting in the mixture, about the size of a large pea, have roll pans very hot and bake in a quick oven. Butter well the pans.
This is a popover batter under another name — a thin egg-and-milk batter that climbs on steam alone, with no leavening. Everything depends on heat.
- The hinge: screaming hot pansThe tins must be preheated in the oven until the butter in them sizzles, and the batter poured in fast. A cold or lukewarm pan gives you dense egg pancakes rather than hollow rolls.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 400-450F. Modern popover practice often starts hot and then drops the heat partway through to set the walls; the original gives no such instruction. Do not open the door during the rise.
- "Roll pans"Deep cast-iron gem or popover pans, or a muffin tin. Deeper cups give taller rolls. Fill each about half to two-thirds full.
- Butter, twiceThe recipe says both to drop a pea of butter into each cup and to butter the pans well — grease the cups thoroughly, then add the knob of butter and heat until it foams.
- Beating the eggsSeparating and beating whites and yolks apart is period habit rather than necessity here; the long beating that follows knocks most of the air out anyway. A modern blender or a few minutes with a whisk gives the same smooth, cream-thin batter.
- Rest the batterNot in the original, but 30 minutes at room temperature hydrates the flour and gives a more reliable rise. Batter made the night before and brought back to room temperature works well.
- YieldThis is a large batch, about four cups of batter: enough to fill a standard muffin tin more than once, or more than one deep popover pan. Serve immediately — they collapse as they cool. Pierce each with a knife tip on coming out of the oven to let the steam escape if you want them to hold their shape a little longer.
Batters of this kind — flour, milk, eggs, salt, no yeast or soda — belong to the same family as English Yorkshire pudding, and American cooks baked them in individual iron gem pans through the nineteenth century. The names varied: egg rolls, popovers and puffets all turn up for much this sort of batter in household books of the period, though "gems" more often meant a leavened muffin-type batter baked in the same pans. The term popover is usually traced to the way the batter puffs up over the rim of the cup, though that is traditional explanation rather than documented fact. They needed no yeast, no rising time and no sponge set the night before, which made them a quick hot bread for a breakfast table, provided the stove was already hot from other work.