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Yorkshire Pudding
Allow one egg, and milk to make a tolerably stiff batter, to two table-spoonfuls of flour. This will make a very good pudding, though a better and lighter one may be made by using two eggs to three table-spoonfuls of flour, or even one egg to each table-spoonful of flour. Put as much flour as will be required into a bowl, and add a pinch of salt. Stir in gradually as much milk as will make a stiff batter, and beat the mixture vigorously till it is perfectly smooth and light. Whisk the eggs separately, and add them to the batter. Place the pudding-tin under the roasting joint, and leave it till it is thoroughly hot and well greased with the drippings from the joint. Pour the batter into it to the thickness of the third of an inch, and bake the pudding before the fire, under the joint. Turn the pan round and round, that the pudding may be equally and lightly browned on every side. Cut it into three-inch squares; take these up separately with a slicer, place them on a separate dish which has been made very hot, and send them immediately to table, to be eaten with the meat and the gravy. If the pudding is to be baked under the roast, the latter may be placed on a stand in the dripping-tin; the pudding, however, will not be so light as if baked before the fire. Out of Yorkshire, what is called Yorkshire pudding is made an inch thick or more, and after it is browned upon one side it is cut into squares and turned over, that it may be browned upon the other. This is quite a different thing from the true Yorkshire pudding, which is made very thin, and browned on the uppermost side only. The batter for this pudding will be much better if made two, three, or even four hours before it is wanted. Cold Yorkshire pudding may be heated in a Dutch oven before the fire. Time to bake the pudding, varying with the kind of range used: with an old-fashioned range, which throws out a good deal of heat in front, the pudding will be baked in from three-quarters to one hour; when a kitchener is used, the pudding will need to be finished off in the oven. It must not, however, be allowed to get dry. If made thick, and browned on both sides, the pudding will need at least an hour and a half. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient, a pudding made with four table-spoonfuls of flour, three eggs, a pinch of salt, and a pint of milk, for five or six persons.
This is a fireside recipe written for a joint turning on a spit, with the batter catching the drippings below. The proportions still work; the equipment assumptions do not.
- The proportions are ambiguousA Victorian table-spoonful of flour is usually reckoned at roughly an ounce, though the measure was never standardised, so the suggested "four table-spoonfuls of flour, three eggs, a pinch of salt, and a pint of milk" works out at something like 4 oz flour to an imperial pint (20 fl oz). By modern reckoning that is a very slack batter; a common modern guideline is roughly equal volumes of flour, egg and milk, around 4 oz flour, 2-3 eggs and 250-300 ml milk. Treat the flour figure as approximate and mix to a batter the thickness of single cream.
- Heat is the whole recipeThe tin must be smoking hot with fat in it before the batter goes in, which is what the instruction to leave it under the joint until "thoroughly hot and well greased" is doing. In an oven, that means a tin of beef dripping or another high-smoke-point fat heated at 425-450F until it shimmers, then the batter poured in and the door shut at once.
- Timings do not transferThe three-quarters to an hour and a half quoted here assumes radiant heat from an open range, not a closed oven. A thin pudding baked at 425-450F is done in 20-25 minutes; a thick one in a large tin, 30-40. Judge by a puffed, deep-brown, set surface rather than the clock.
- Resting the batterThe advice to make the batter two to four hours ahead is sound and still standard practice. It lets the flour hydrate fully and the gluten relax, giving a better rise and a less rubbery crumb. Overnight in the refrigerator does no harm; bring it back toward room temperature before baking.
- Thin versus thickThe distinction drawn here is real: the Yorkshire version is a wide, thin sheet browned on top only and cut into squares, not the individual popover-shaped puddings most people now expect. If you want the thin version, use the largest tin that will fit and pour the batter no more than a third of an inch deep.
- Vessels and appliances namedA "kitchener" is an enclosed cast-iron cooking range, effectively an early oven. A "Dutch oven" here is the open-fronted tin reflector set before an open fire, not the lidded cast-iron pot the term means today. A pudding-tin is simply a shallow rectangular baking tin.
- Cooking under the jointSetting the roast on a rack above the batter works, but the pudding steams as much as it bakes and comes out heavier, as the text concedes. Roasting the meat separately and resting it while the pudding bakes in its own hot fat gives a better result in a modern oven.
- YieldThe stated quantity serves five or six as an accompaniment. Serve it the moment it comes out; a Yorkshire pudding begins to collapse within a couple of minutes of leaving the heat.
Yorkshire pudding began as a way of catching the fat that fell from a joint roasting on a spit, and eighteenth-century cookery books call it dripping pudding; the county name attached to it by the middle of that century, and Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery of 1747 is usually cited as the first printed use of "Yorkshire pudding". The insistence here on the thin, single-browned sheet as the only true version, with everything else dismissed as what is made "out of Yorkshire", is a piece of regional pride that Cassell's editors clearly took seriously. It is often said that the pudding was served first, with gravy, before the meat came to table, so that a cheap batter took the edge off the appetite and the joint went further; this is a widely repeated tradition rather than a documented one, though the cost noted at the end of this entry, sevenpence for a dish for six, is worth setting beside it.