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Pop-Overs (Eggs t salt Put flour and salt)
2 eggs 1/4 t salt Put flour and salt into mixing bowl, add unbeaten eggs and add gradually the milk. Beat well. Pour into greased muffin pans, and bake one-half hour in hot oven.
Mrs. Carl Schreck.
The ingredient list has been cropped in the original printing: only the eggs and salt survive, though the method calls for flour and milk. The standard popover proportion of the period fills the gap.
- The missing quantitiesFlour and milk are named in the method but their amounts are lost from the page. Period popover recipes commonly run to roughly equal parts by volume — about 1 cup flour to 1 cup milk for 2 eggs — which gives a thin batter about the consistency of heavy cream.
- "Hot oven"In a book of this vintage that generally means something in the region of 400–450F. Popovers need the high initial heat to flash the liquid into steam; a moderate oven produces heavy, damp muffins.
- Don't open the doorThis is the hinge. The structure is set by steam pressure inside a barely-cooked shell, and a draft of cool air at the wrong moment collapses it. Leave the oven shut for at least the first 20 minutes of the half hour.
- PansDeep cast-iron popover cups or a straight-sided muffin tin both work; wide shallow cups give less rise. Grease generously and preheat the empty pan in the oven before filling, which starts the climb immediately.
- Beating"Beat well" here means enough to break up the eggs and eliminate lumps, not to aerate. There is no leavening in the batter — the lift is entirely steam, so overbeating gains nothing and developing too much gluten toughens the shell.
- RestingLetting the batter stand 20–30 minutes at room temperature hydrates the flour and gives a noticeably better rise. The original assumes you will bake at once, which works but is less reliable.
- Fill levelHalf to two-thirds full. Overfilled cups spill and seal the rims to the pan, which stops them rising.
- Yield and servingTwo eggs' worth makes about 6 standard popovers or 8 smaller ones. Serve straight from the oven with butter; they deflate and go leathery within minutes of cooling. Pierce each one with a knife tip on removal if you want the interiors to stay dry.
Popovers are the American descendant of English batter pudding — the same flour, milk and egg mixture that was baked under a joint of beef as Yorkshire pudding, transferred to greased muffin cups and raised by steam alone. The name, generally traced to the mid-nineteenth century, is often said to describe what the batter does as it climbs and topples over the rim of the cup. Their appearance in a community cookbook like this one is unsurprising: they use three cheap staples, need no yeast, no baking powder and no waiting, and can be got into the oven while the rest of the supper finishes. The garbled ingredient line is itself typical of the genre — such books are generally said to have been assembled from handwritten cards contributed by members, set in small local print shops, and proofread lightly if at all.