Pop Overs
Three cupfuls of flour, three cups milk, (sweet), three eggs, a little salt, beat the eggs separately, add the flour, and a little of the milk, beat together for about fifteen minutes; then add the rest of the milk, and put them in hot gem pans, in a very hot oven They should bake in ten minutes.
A plain popover batter of the kind that turns up in almost every American breakfast chapter of the period. Two things need attention: the oven and the stated baking time.
- Ten minutes is not enoughPopovers need 30 to 40 minutes total — roughly 15 minutes at high heat to force the steam, then the rest at around 350F to set the walls. Pulled at ten minutes they will collapse into damp shells as they cool. Do not open the oven during the first 25 minutes.
- "A very hot oven"Roughly 450F. A wood-range cook judged this by hand or by a flour-scorching test; set a modern oven to 450F and let it preheat fully, with the pans heating inside it.
- Gem pansCast-iron gem pans — the deep-welled ancestor of the muffin tin. A modern popover pan or a heavy muffin tin works; grease it well and get it genuinely hot before the batter goes in, since the initial blast of heat off the metal is what starts the rise.
- "Sweet" milkSimply fresh milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that older recipes often call for. Whole milk gives the best result.
- Beat the eggs separatelyProbably yolks and whites beaten in separate bowls, though the phrase can also simply mean beating the eggs by themselves before the flour goes in. Either way it is optional by modern practice, since the leavening comes from steam rather than air.
- Fifteen minutes of beatingA hand-whisk instruction. Thirty seconds in a blender, or two minutes with a whisk, gets a smoother batter than any nineteenth-century arm. The aim is no lumps and a consistency like thin cream; let the batter rest 30 minutes before baking.
- YieldAbout 12 to 14 large popovers. Serve immediately — they deflate within minutes of leaving the oven.
Popovers are often said to be the American descendant of Yorkshire pudding, the same flour-milk-egg batter freed from the dripping pan and baked in individual cups. The name is traditionally traced to the way the batter swells and pops over the rim of the tin, and it appears in print in the United States through the second half of the nineteenth century, by which point the dish was commonly served at breakfast, though it also continued to accompany roast meats. Its place in a breakfast chapter reflects the fact that it needs no leavening: the rise comes entirely from steam and a violently hot oven.