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Popovers
2 eggs ½ cup butter 1½ cups sugar. 1 cup sweet milk ½ teaspoon soda No. 2 1 teaspoon cream of tartar ½ cup molasses 1 teaspoon mixed spices Five Roses flour to stiffen.
Bake in moderate oven.
Note on Popovers-If a quick dessert is wanted, popovers may be readily used.
As the batter is poured into the tins, add a piece of fruit to each. Served with a simple syrup, these popovers are delicious. 1 egg
Despite the name, this is not the hollow egg-and-milk popover of a hot oven — it is a molasses spice gem baked in muffin tins, leavened chemically rather than by steam. Read it that way and the moderate oven makes sense.
- "Flour to stiffen" is the whole problemNo quantity is given. Aim for a thick batter that mounds on the spoon rather than pours; with roughly 1½ cups of liquid here that is likely to take upwards of two cups of all-purpose flour, but the amount has to be judged by feel. Stop as soon as it holds its shape; more flour gives a dry, bricky crumb.
- Soda "No. 2"The designation is not explained in the recipe and does not translate cleanly to a modern brand or grade. Treat it as ordinary baking soda, ½ teaspoon.
- Soda plus cream of tartarThis is homemade baking powder: ½ teaspoon soda with 1 teaspoon cream of tartar is close to 1½ to 2 teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder. It is single-acting, so it starts working the moment the batter is wet — mix and get the tins into the oven promptly.
- Moderate oven350°F. True popovers want 425°F and a wet, eggy batter to blow them open; this one has molasses and only a single egg, and would scorch at that heat.
- The eggIt is printed last, out of sequence with the rest of the ingredient list. Beat it into the milk and molasses before the dry ingredients go in.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk called for in many recipes of the period. Do not substitute buttermilk here — the acid balance is already set by the cream of tartar and molasses.
- Mixed spicesA period pantry blend, generally cinnamon-led with allspice, nutmeg, ginger and sometimes clove. Any pumpkin-pie or mixed-spice blend works; a teaspoon is modest for this much molasses.
- The tinsGem or muffin tins, often cast iron in this period, are the likely vessel; the recipe itself says only "tins." Grease well, and preheating the empty pan for a few minutes helps the batter set on contact and release cleanly.
- Yield and servingAbout twelve small gems, 18 to 22 minutes until springy. The note about pressing a piece of fruit into each and serving with simple syrup turns them into a dessert; a plum, apricot half or a few berries all work.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal, and like other millers' cookbooks of the early twentieth century it existed to sell flour — which may be why the direction here is simply to add "Five Roses flour to stiffen" rather than a measured cup. Molasses and mixed spices in a quick bread point to a household economy where sugar was bought sparingly and molasses came by the pail, and the soda-and-cream-of-tartar pairing is leavening built from scratch at a time when commercial baking powders were also on the shelf.