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Breakfast Puffs
One tumbler of flour, one tumbler of milk, and one egg. Beat the yolk and milk together, then add the flour, and lastly the white of the egg. Bake a few minutes in a hot oven.--Mrs. I. H.
Another Recipe for the Same.
Take two eggs well beaten and stir into a pint of milk; add a little salt, two spoonfuls of melted butter, one and one-half pints of flour. Stir thoroughly, so as to avoid lumps. Grease the cups in which you pour the batter, and fill them two-thirds full.
Two versions of what a modern cook would call popovers: a thin egg batter that inflates into a hollow shell from steam alone, with no leavening. The first is barely more than crepe batter; the second is stiffer and richer.
- The tumblerA tumbler in a kitchen of this era is normally read as a half-pint drinking glass, about 8 fluid ounces, i.e. one cup, though tumblers varied in size and the book does not define it. On that reading the first recipe is 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 1 egg — equal parts by volume, which is the classic popover ratio.
- "A hot oven"425 to 450F. Popovers depend on a violent initial blast of heat to turn the milk to steam before the crust sets; a moderate oven gives flat, damp cakes.
- "A few minutes" is far too shortThe hinge of the whole thing. These need 20 to 30 minutes total — hot for the first 15 to force the rise, then reduce to about 350F to dry the interior. Pulled early they collapse into wet dough.
- Beat, then restBoth versions want a smooth, lump-free batter. Letting it stand 20 to 30 minutes before baking hydrates the flour and gives a better rise, though the recipes do not say so.
- Whipping the whiteThe white added last -- The first recipe holds the white back and adds it last, an older habit, though it does not actually say to beat it. Whipped or not, it is not necessary — steam does the lifting — but a lightly folded beaten white does no harm.
- The second recipe's proportionsA pint of milk to a pint and a half of flour is roughly 2 cups milk to 3 cups flour, a noticeably thicker batter than the first. It will rise less dramatically and eat more like a soft roll. Slackening it toward equal volumes gives the hollow shell most people want.
- The cupsGrease heavily, and preheat the pan and fat before the batter goes in. Cast-iron gem pans or deep muffin cups both work; deep and narrow gives the best climb. Two-thirds full is right.
- YieldThe first recipe fills about 6 standard muffin cups; the second, about 12. Serve straight from the oven — they begin to deflate within a few minutes.
Popovers of this kind descend from English batter puddings, the same family as Yorkshire pudding, which was originally baked in a pan under roasting meat to catch the drippings. Detached from the joint and poured into individual greased cups, the batter became a breakfast bread — quick to mix, needing no yeast, no soda and no waiting. The name "popover" is generally traced to American usage in the nineteenth century, describing the way the batter pops up over the rim of the cup. That Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877) prints two versions side by side, credited and uncredited, reflects how the book was assembled: Marion Cabell Tyree gathered contributions from a wide circle of Virginia housekeepers and often set competing versions of the same dish next to each other rather than choosing between them.