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Pop Overs (One cupful of flour one cupful)
One cupful of flour, one cupful of sweet milk, one egg and a pinch of salt. Put the egg, flour, salt and half the milk together; whip very light, then gradually add the balance of the milk. Half fill deep gem pans and bake forty minutes in an oven at the same temperature as for bread. As a general rule it is advisable to beat the yolks of the eggs with the batter, and to beat the whites separately and fold them carefully into the batter at the very last. But in all very thin batters it is best to beat the eggs without separating the whites and yolks, with the flour and a portion of the milk, as in pop overs, and similar mixtures.
A three-ingredient batter that depends entirely on steam, so the details of pan and heat matter more than the ingredient list.
- The hinge: a very hot pan and an unopened ovenThe hinge: a hot oven and a closed door -- Grease the pans well before filling them. Opening the oven while the popovers are still rising lets the steam escape and they may collapse.
- "An oven at the same temperature as for bread"In a period wood or coal range that meant a brisk oven, somewhere in the region of 400-450F. Modern popover recipes often start hot and drop the heat partway, but this recipe specifies a single temperature for the whole forty minutes.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh milk, named to distinguish it from the soured milk or buttermilk that many recipes in this era called for. Whole milk is the usual choice.
- Deep gem pansCast-iron gem pans were the standard; a modern popover pan or a deep muffin tin does the same job. Fill each cup no more than half, as the instruction says, because the batter climbs several times its own height.
- One egg is leanA single egg to a cup of flour and a cup of milk is on the low side and produces a modest, softer popover. Two eggs to the same flour and milk gives the taller, hollow, crisp-walled version usually expected now.
- Batter consistencyIt should be thin, roughly the body of heavy cream, and completely smooth. Lumps of flour turn into dense spots that stop the shell from inflating, so strain if whipping alone does not clear them.
- On the note about eggsThe advice at the end is sound and worth keeping: in thin batters, whole eggs beaten straight into flour and part of the milk build the gluten and emulsion that trap steam. Folded whites would simply deflate here.
- Yield and servingSix or so, depending on the size of the gem cups. Serve them within a few minutes of leaving the oven; pierce each one to let steam escape if they must wait at all.
Popovers are the American descendant of English batter puddings, the same family as Yorkshire pudding, moved from a dripping pan under the roast into individual iron cups. The name is often said to describe what the batter does: it pops over the rim of the pan as the steam expands, though this derivation is traditional rather than established, and the term is documented in print from the 1870s. They were used as a quick hot bread for breakfast or tea that needed no yeast, no soda and no waiting, a real advantage in a household where the range was already hot for the day's baking. The final paragraph on when to separate eggs is characteristic of turn-of-the-century cookbooks, which were beginning to explain the reasoning behind a technique rather than simply issuing the order.