Popovers
One cup of flour One cup of milk One-fourth teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt Two eggs Put the flour and salt into a bowl, add the eggs, unbeaten, and add the milk, gradually,-beating well. Pour into heated, greased muffin-pans and bake one-half hour in a hot oven.
A four-ingredient batter that lives or dies on oven heat and pan preparation. The original assumes a coal range at full blast and iron gem pans already sitting in it.
- A hot ovenRead this as roughly 425-450F. A common modern approach is to start at 450F for the first 15 minutes and then drop to 350F so the shells set without scorching, though the original simply calls for a half hour in a hot oven.
- Heat the pans firstThis is the hinge. The pans must be greased and preheated in the oven until the fat shimmers, so the batter starts steaming the instant it hits the metal. Batter poured into cold tins gives dense, squat muffins.
- Larkin Table SaltA house brand from the Larkin Company, the Buffalo soap-and-premium firm that issued this book. Any fine table salt works; the quarter teaspoon is right for a cup of flour.
- Unbeaten eggsAdding whole eggs to the dry flour and then loosening with milk is a deliberate order that keeps lumps down. Beat until the batter is smooth and about the thickness of heavy cream, no thicker.
- Room-temperature ingredientsCold milk and eggs are often said to slow the rise, so letting both stand out, or warming the milk slightly, is a common precaution; the original says nothing about it.
- Do not open the ovenThe lift is steam, and opening the door in the first 20 minutes risks collapsing the shells.
- PansThe recipe calls for muffin-pans; the iron gem pans common at the time are a fair equivalent. A modern popover pan with deep straight wells works best; standard muffin tins give shorter, rounder results. Fill each well no more than half to two-thirds.
- YieldAbout six large popovers or eight to ten in a standard muffin tin. Serve straight from the oven; they deflate as they cool.
Popovers are the American descendant of English batter puddings, the same flour-milk-egg mixture that becomes Yorkshire pudding when it is baked under a joint of beef. Detached from the roasting pan and baked in individual iron gem pans, the batter rose into hollow shells and picked up a new name, generally traced to the way it pops over the rim of the cup as it bakes. The recipe's appearance in a Larkin Company cookbook is itself a period detail: Larkin sold soap and groceries by mail and rewarded customers with premiums, and books like this one both taught cooking and kept the brand's own salt, baking powder and extracts on the ingredient list.