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Popovers
1 well beaten egg 3/4 cup milk 1 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon salt Beat egg, add milk, stir in dry ingredients, beat vigorously. Pour into well greased muffin cups and bake in hot oven 425 degrees F. about 40 minutes.
A very lean popover batter — one egg to a cup of flour — that relies entirely on steam and a hot oven for its lift. Nothing here is difficult, but a few details decide whether you get hollow shells or heavy muffins.
- The hinge: do not open the ovenPopovers rise on steam alone, and a draft of cool air before the walls have set will collapse them. Leave the door shut for at least the first 25 minutes.
- Oven heat425F is what the recipe calls for. Many modern popover recipes drop to around 350F partway through so the interiors dry out without the tops scorching; at a straight 425F for the full 40 minutes, watch them from 30 minutes on.
- Batter consistencyWith only 3/4 cup milk and one egg to a cup of flour, this batter will be thicker than the thin, cream-like batter of most modern popover recipes. Beat until smooth with no flour streaks remaining; letting it stand 15 to 30 minutes lets the flour hydrate and the gluten relax.
- Egg proportionOne egg per cup of flour is on the low side for a modern popover; two eggs with a full cup of milk gives a taller, more hollow result. As written it will still pop, just less dramatically.
- Room-temperature ingredientsCold milk and cold eggs slow the initial burst of steam. Bring both to room temperature, or warm the milk slightly.
- The panGrease the cups generously, including the rims, and preheat the pan in the oven before filling. Fill about two-thirds full. A deep popover pan gives more height than a standard shallow muffin tin.
- YieldAbout 4 to 6 popovers in standard muffin cups, fewer in a deep popover pan. Serve immediately -- they deflate and soften within minutes.
- VentingIf you want them to stay crisp, pierce each one with a knife tip as it comes out so trapped steam escapes rather than resoftening the shell.
Popovers are usually described as the American descendant of English batter puddings -- the same flour, milk and egg batter that becomes Yorkshire pudding when poured into hot beef drippings. The name is generally traced to the way the batter pops up over the rim of its cup. Recipes of this kind appear in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, sometimes under names such as "puffs." Three cheap staples, no yeast and no rising time, and a showy result that has to arrive at the table hot from the oven -- they cannot be made ahead.