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Yorkshire Pudding (III)
Mrs. S. McGee.
When roasting a piece of beef lay it on sticks in your bake pan, so that the juice of the meat will drop into the pan below; three-quarters of an hour before the beef is done, mix the following pudding and pour it into the pan under the meat, letting the drippings continue to fall upon it; one pint milk, four eggs well beaten, two cups flour, one teaspoon salt.
This is the original Yorkshire pudding method: batter cooked in the roasting pan beneath the joint, fed by falling drippings. It works in a modern oven with two adjustments — a rack instead of sticks, and enough heat.
- The sticks and the pan"Sticks" here means wooden or metal bars laid across the pan to hold the beef clear of the bottom; a wire roasting rack set inside a shallow pan does the same job. The pan needs to be wide and low, not a deep casserole, or the batter will steam rather than rise.
- Heat is the hingeYorkshire pudding rises on steam and needs the pan and fat hot enough to set the outside instantly. If the beef is roasting low and slow at 300–325F the pudding will be pale and heavy; raise the oven to 425F for the last 45 minutes, or cook the pudding separately in a preheated pan at 425–450F.
- Batter proportionsOne pint milk, four eggs, two cups flour and a teaspoon of salt gives a batter on the thick side by modern standards; period cup measures were not standardised, so the flour weight cannot be pinned down. Aim for the consistency of heavy cream and add a splash more milk if it is thicker than that.
- Rest the batterMix it and let it stand 30 minutes to an hour before it goes in the pan. Rested batter hydrates fully and is generally held to climb higher.
- DrippingsThe whole point is beef fat. If your joint is lean, supplement with a tablespoon or two of beef dripping, tallow or a neutral high-smoke-point oil in the pan and get it smoking before the batter goes in.
- TimingForty-five minutes suits a large pan pudding at a roasting heat. Do not open the door for the first 20 minutes. Individual puddings in a muffin tin take 20–25 minutes at 425F.
- Yield and servingThis makes enough for six to eight as a side. Traditionally it was cut into squares and served before the beef, with gravy, to blunt the appetite; serving it alongside the meat is the later habit.
Yorkshire pudding began as a thrifty way to catch what would otherwise be wasted: the fat and juices dripping from a joint turning before an open fire. Early printed versions — Hannah Glasse's 1747 Art of Cookery gives one under the name "Yorkshire pudding," following an earlier "dripping pudding" — describe exactly this arrangement, with the batter set in a pan beneath the roasting meat. By the time The Home Cook Book was compiled in the 1870s the closed cast-iron range was widely in use in North American kitchens, which may be why Mrs. McGee's version specifies sticks laid in a bake pan rather than a hook and a fire. That the book carries three separate Yorkshire pudding recipes suggests how unsettled the dish still was. The custom of serving it first, as a filling course ahead of an expensive roast, is generally traced to northern English farmhouse practice.