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Popovers
1¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
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 lean batter that rises on steam alone — there is no leavening here, so the heat of the pan and the oven does all the work. Everything below serves that one mechanism.
- The hinge: a screaming-hot greased panGrease the cups and heat the empty pan in the oven until the fat shimmers, then pour the batter in and return it immediately. Batter hitting cold metal produces dense muffins rather than hollow shells.
- Oven temperatureStart hot: the book's own note gives 400–450°F, and its table allows 350 to 450°F. Reduce the heat toward the end, as the last line instructs — about 350°F for the final stretch. Total time thirty to forty minutes.
- Do not open the doorThe structure is set by steam pressure against a still-soft wall of egg and starch. Opening the oven before the shells have set can collapse them, and they will not rise a second time.
- Beat, then rest"Beat thoroughly" is meant literally — the batter should be smooth and the consistency of heavy cream. Letting it stand 30 minutes to an hour before baking relaxes the gluten and gives a taller pop, though the original does not ask for it.
- Pans and ramekinsCast-iron muffin pans or a dedicated deep popover pan work best because they hold heat. Ceramic ramekins are slower and give a softer shell. Fill half full, no more.
- Flour1¼ cups of period all-purpose flour weighs roughly 5½ oz / 155 g. Modern bleached all-purpose is close enough; bread flour gives a chewier, taller shell if you want one.
- Yield and servingAbout 6 large or 8 to 10 small popovers. Serve within minutes of leaving the oven, split with butter or jam. If they must wait, pierce each with a knife tip to let steam escape or they go limp.
Popovers are the American descendant of the English batter pudding baked in dripping — the same flour, milk and egg mixture that becomes Yorkshire pudding under a joint of beef. Once cooks began baking the batter in individual cups rather than a single tin, the name followed, and it is often said to describe the way the batter pops over the rim of the cup as it inflates. The name is generally traced to nineteenth-century New England, and the dish belongs to the family of quick breads, something a cook could put on the table without waiting for yeast. Its appearance in a household book is telling: popovers require no leavening agent to buy and only a handful of ingredients most kitchens already held, but they demand a hot pan and a steady oven, which made them a fair test of whether a range was behaving.