Pop Overs
1 cup flour. 1 cup sweet milk. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 2 eggs. Mix carefully and pour into greased rings.
Bake in hot oven 30 or 35 minutes until crisp and brown.
A four-ingredient batter that depends almost entirely on oven heat and pan preparation. The instructions assume a cook who already owns iron gem rings and a coal range running hot.
- The hinge: a genuinely hot oven"hot oven" in books of this period is usually read as somewhere around 400-450F. Greasing generously is called for; preheating the pan before the batter goes in is a modern refinement, not something the recipe specifies. Popovers rise on steam, and a lukewarm start sets the crust before the interior can inflate.
- Sweet milkThis means ordinary fresh whole milk, as distinct from the soured milk or buttermilk called for in soda-leavened breads. There is no chemical leavening in this recipe at all.
- Greased ringsCast-iron gem or popover rings. A deep muffin tin or a modern popover pan works; fill each cup about half full and grease generously, including the rim, since the batter climbs.
- Egg sizeEggs of this era are often said to have run smaller than today's large, though that varied. Two large eggs to one cup each of flour and milk gives a batter roughly the consistency of heavy cream, which is what you want.
- "Mix carefully"Beat until completely smooth with no flour lumps, then let the batter stand 20–30 minutes if you have time. Overmixing is not the risk here; unhydrated flour is.
- Don't open the ovenLeave the door shut for at least the first 25 minutes. The 30–35 minute range is right, but the popovers must be deep brown and firm before they come out or they collapse.
- YieldAbout six large popovers, or eight to nine in a standard muffin tin. Serve immediately; they soften within minutes.
Popovers are the American descendant of the batter puddings baked under roasting meat in English kitchens, the same family as Yorkshire pudding — the difference being that they are baked in individual cups with butter or drippings rather than in one large pan. The name is generally traced to the way the batter pops over the rim of the tin as it inflates, and the dish appears in American cookbooks under that name from the later nineteenth century. Mrs. Wilson, who wrote for a mass audience during and after the First World War with an eye on economy, would have valued a bread that needs no yeast, no baking powder, and no sugar — just flour, milk, eggs, and a hot oven.