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Pop Overs (II)
Mrs. S. S. Pierce.
One cup flour, one cup milk, one egg, piece butter size of a walnut, a little salt; to be baked in scallops in a very quick oven.
This rule makes twelve.
A minimal popover batter — equal cups of flour and milk, one egg — leavened entirely by steam. Everything depends on the pans being hot and the oven being hot.
- "A very quick oven"Roughly 425-450F; period oven terms were approximate. Popovers need the initial blast to convert the milk to steam faster than the crust can set; a moderate oven gives you dense little pancakes in cups. Dropping to about 350F after 15-20 minutes dries the interior without burning the tops.
- "Baked in scallops"Scallop shells, or the small tin shell-shaped moulds sold in sets for baking individual portions. A muffin tin or proper popover pan does the same job. Whatever you use, heat it in the oven and grease it before the batter goes in — cold tins are the usual cause of failure.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout one tablespoon, melted and beaten in. Shelled walnut, not in the shell.
- One eggNineteenth-century eggs were ungraded and generally ran smaller than today's large. One large egg is fine here, but a batter that seems thick should be loosened with a spoonful more milk — it should be the consistency of thin cream and pour freely.
- YieldTwelve is only plausible in very small shells or a standard muffin tin filled a third to half full. In a six-cup popover pan this quantity makes six, and they will be taller.
- Beat, then leave aloneBeat until smooth — a few lumps do no harm — and let the batter stand 20 to 30 minutes so the flour hydrates. Once the pans are in the oven, do not open the door for the first 20 minutes or the steam escapes and the shells collapse.
- ServingEat them within minutes of coming out, while hollow and crisp. If they must wait, pierce each one with a knife point to let the steam out or they go soft.
Popovers are the American descendant of the batter puddings that had been baked under roasting meat in England for well over a century — the same flour, milk and egg mixture as Yorkshire pudding, moved out of the dripping pan and into individual moulds. The name is generally traced to the way the batter pops up over the rim of the cup as it bakes, and it appears in print in American cookbooks through the second half of the nineteenth century. This is the second of the book's popover rules, and the presence of two versions is characteristic of the community-compiled cookbook: recipes were collected from subscribers rather than tested against one another, so duplicates and near-duplicates sit side by side. The instruction to bake "in scallops" points to the fashion for baking and serving small portions in real or tin scallop shells.