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Beef, Yorkshire Pudding For
Take eggs, flour, and milk, according to the size of the pudding required. Allow an egg to every heaped table-spoonful of flour, and salt to taste. Beat it to a proper consistency with good new milk; it should be thinner than for boiled batter. If this pudding be not required for a large family a separate compartment may be used for it, and the other part of the dripping-pan may receive the gravy required to throw over the meat. In any case, place the dripping-pan and joint to the fire till the fat begins to flow, before the batter is put in, and stir it round in the basin that no sediment may remain. See that it cooks evenly and that the edges are not burned, and when done sufficiently turn if liked. Some prefer it browned on one side only. The usual thickness is about an inch when well browned on both sides. Divide into pieces sufficient for each person, and send it to table quickly. It should be put into the dripping just in time to get it done with the meat. Time, one and a half to two hours.
BEER, HOW TO TREAT "FOXED." "Foxed" beer has a rank unpleasant taste, and may be known by the white specks floating on its surface. To remedy this, infuse a handful of hops and a little salt of tartar in a pint of boiling water, and, when cold, strain and pour into the cask, closing the bunghole at once.
This is a spit-roasting recipe: the batter cooks in the dripping-pan beneath a joint turning at an open fire. Translating it to an oven changes the timing and the technique more than the batter itself.
- The proportionsOne egg to each heaped tablespoon of flour is roughly one egg per ounce of flour, a rich, eggy batter by modern standards. The recipe's own guide is that it should be thinner than a batter made for boiling, i.e. freely pourable; the milk is deliberately left unmeasured because the consistency is judged by eye.
- "Good new milk"New milk simply means fresh whole milk, as opposed to skimmed or the previous day's. Whole milk is the right substitute; skimmed batter browns less and tastes thin.
- The timing is the joint's, not the pudding'sThe hour and a half to two hours refers to the whole roast at the fire. A Yorkshire pudding baked in a hot oven takes 25 to 35 minutes in a tin, or 15 to 20 in individual moulds.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature: this pudding cooks in the dripping-pan at the fire, and books of this kind did not quote oven heats in any case. For a modern version the tin and fat must be smoking hot and the oven very hot, around 425-450F; a moderate oven gives a pale, heavy pudding that never rises.
- The hinge: hot fat firstThe instruction to bring the dripping-pan to the fire until the fat begins to flow before the batter goes in is the whole trick. Batter poured into cool fat sits and stews rather than puffing.
- Stirring in the basinStirring the batter round again just before pouring redistributes the flour that has settled. Many modern recipes recommend resting the batter for half an hour or so after mixing, then stirring again for the same reason.
- Turning itUnder a spit the pudding could be lifted and flipped to brown both faces to the stated inch thickness. In an oven this is neither possible nor wanted; the top browns and the underside crisps in the fat.
- YieldThe recipe scales by eggs and tablespoons 'according to the size of the pudding required', so quantity is left to the cook; four eggs and four heaped tablespoons of flour makes only a small pudding, and a large tin at the stated inch thickness would need considerably more.
- The beer note is not part of the recipeThe paragraph on "foxed" beer is a stray household hint that the dictionary's alphabetical run has pushed against the pudding. White specks and a rank taste mean microbial spoilage, which hops and salt of tartar do not reverse; such beer should be poured away.
Yorkshire pudding began as dripping pudding, a batter set beneath roasting meat to catch the fat that would otherwise be wasted, and the name is generally traced to Hannah Glasse, who printed "A Yorkshire Pudding" in The Art of Cookery in 1747, a decade after nearly the same batter appeared simply as a dripping pudding. The economy is the point: the pudding was often eaten first, with gravy, so that a small joint would stretch across a large table, which is why Cassell's bothers to mention that a separate compartment of the dripping-pan can be reserved "if this pudding be not required for a large family." It is the instruction to set the dripping-pan at the fire, more than that detail, that ties the entry to the open range and the turning spit.