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Popovers
1 1/4 cups flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 eggs 1 teaspoon sugar 1 cup milk Mix the flour, salt and sugar. Gradually add the milk and the well-beaten eggs. Beat thoroughly. Have ready some small ramekins or iron muffin-pans, well greased and piping hot. Fill them about half full of the batter and bake in a hot oven for thirty to forty minutes. The heat should be reduced toward the end to prevent the popovers from becoming too brown.
A three-ingredient batter that lives or dies on heat. Everything here depends on the pans being genuinely hot when the batter goes in and the oven not being opened while the popovers rise.
- The hinge: hot, greased pansGrease the cups and set the empty pan in the oven while it preheats, then pour the batter into the sizzling pan. Batter hitting cold metal steams gently instead of exploding upward, and you get muffins rather than popovers.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no figures. A "hot oven" in books of this period is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. In a modern oven, starting at about 450F for the first 15-20 minutes and then dropping to about 350F for the remainder is one way to read "the heat should be reduced toward the end."
- Do not open the doorNo peeking for the first 20 minutes. The structure is nothing but steam trapped in a thin egg-and-flour shell, and a draft of cool air collapses it before the walls have set.
- Total timeThirty to forty minutes is right, but judge by colour and rigidity: the sides should be deep brown and firm to a tap, not pale and flexible.
- Batter consistencyBeat until smooth and about the thickness of heavy cream. A blender or a whisk both work; unhydrated lumps of flour are one thing that can give squat results.
- PansIron muffin pans or deep straight-sided popover pans give the best lift. Ordinary shallow muffin tins work but produce shorter, rounder results. Fill half full as directed, no more.
- Resting the batterNot in the original. Some cooks rest the batter 30 minutes at room temperature on the grounds that it lets the flour absorb the milk and relaxes the gluten; whether it improves the rise is arguable.
- YieldAbout 8 popovers in standard muffin cups, or 6 in a deep popover pan. Serve immediately with butter; they deflate within minutes of leaving the oven.