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Pop-overs (Cup flour teaspoon salt cup)
1 cup flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 7/8 cup milk 2 eggs 1/2 teaspoon melted butter Mix salt and flour; add milk gradually, in order to obtain a smooth batter. Add egg, beaten until light, and butter; beat two minutes,--using egg-beater,--turn into hissing hot buttered iron gem pans, and bake thirty to thirty-five minutes in a hot oven. They may be baked in buttered earthen cups, when the bottom will have a glazed appearance. Small round iron gem pans are best for Pop-overs.
A classic steam-leavened batter: no baking powder, no yeast, just eggs, liquid and a violently hot pan. Almost everything depends on the pans being preheated and the oven staying shut.
- The hinge: hissing hot pansButter the pans and heat them in the oven until the butter shimmers, then pour the batter in and return them at once. Batter poured into a cold tin will rise sluggishly and set into a dense muffin instead of a hollow shell.
- "Hot oven"425 to 450F. Some cooks start at 450F for the first 15 minutes and drop to 350F for the remainder to keep the walls from scorching before the interior dries out.
- Keep the door closedDo not open the oven during the first 25 minutes. The structure is held up by steam alone, and a draught of cool air collapses it before the crust has set.
- 7/8 cup milkThree-quarters of a cup plus two tablespoons. The batter should be about the consistency of heavy cream, thin enough to pour freely.
- Gem pansNineteenth-century gem pans were heavy cast iron with deep, round cups. A modern cast-iron popover pan or muffin tin works; deep straight-sided cups give the tallest results. The recipe notes that the earthen-cup variant leaves the bottom with a glazed appearance, though it does not say why.
- 1/2 teaspoon butterThe recipe as printed calls for a teaspoon. This is a fat-lean batter, and the small amount is there for flavour and tenderness rather than richness.
- BeatingTwo minutes by hand with a rotary beater, as the recipe directs; roughly 30 seconds in a blender is often given as a rough substitute. Beat until genuinely smooth. Resting the batter 15 to 20 minutes is commonly recommended on the grounds that it relaxes the gluten, though the recipe says nothing of it.
- Yield and servingSix to eight popovers depending on cup size. Serve straight from the oven; they deflate within minutes. If you want them to hold, pierce each one with a knife tip on removal to let the steam escape.