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Yorkshire Pudding
1 cup milk 1 cup flour 2 eggs 1/4 teaspoon salt Miss C. J. Wills Mix salt and flour, and add milk gradually to form a smooth paste; then add eggs beaten until very light. Cover bottom of hot pan with some of beef fat tried out from roast, pour mixture in pan one-half inch deep. Bake twenty minutes in hot oven, basting after well risen, with some of the fat from pan in which meat is roasting. Cut in squares for serving. Bake, if preferred, in greased, hissing hot iron gem pans.
A plain, honest batter pudding of the sort that assumes there is a beef roast in the oven already. The whole thing hinges on heat: fat and pan must be hot enough to hiss when the batter hits them.
- "Hot oven"Roughly 425-450F by modern reckoning, though the book gives no temperature. The recipe assumes the beef is still roasting alongside, since it calls for basting with fat from that pan.
- Beef fat "tried out"Rendered drippings poured off the roasting pan. Two to three tablespoons is enough for a shallow pan; it should shimmer and smoke faintly before the batter goes in. Beef tallow or clarified butter will stand in, though neither has the flavour.
- Gem pansCast-iron gem pans are the ancestor of the muffin tin, and a heavy 12-cup tin works the same way. Heat the tin with the fat in it in the oven, then fill each cup a third full. Individual puddings take 15-20 minutes.
- Rest the batterNot in the original, but worth doing: half an hour on the counter lets the flour hydrate and gives a better rise. The batter should be the consistency of thin cream.
- On the bastingModern practice leaves the oven door shut. Opening it partway through drops the temperature and can collapse a pudding that has just risen. If you want the fat-basted top, spoon a little over in the last five minutes.
- Depth and timingHalf an inch of batter in a shallow pan genuinely does cook in twenty minutes. A deeper pudding in a modern baking dish needs 25-30 minutes and should come out set through, not custardy in the centre.
- YieldAbout six servings cut in squares, or a dozen small individual puddings.