Tea Puffs
Two and one-quarter cupfuls flour, three cupfuls milk, three eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately; three teaspoonfuls of melted butter, a little salt. Bake in cups in a hot oven.
This is a popover batter under an older name — thin, eggy, and leavened only by steam. The proportions are unusually wet even for popovers, so the handling of the pan matters more than anything else in the list.
- Hot oven means 425-450FHot oven -- the book gives no figure. Period usage puts "hot" somewhere around 400-450F; 425F is a reasonable modern reading. If you like, hold it for the first 15-20 minutes so the steam inflates the batter, then drop to 350F for another 15 to set the walls.
- "Cups" are the panThe original gives no more than that; small ovenproof cups of some kind, of the sort later formalised as a popover pan. Deep muffin cups or heavy ovenproof ramekins work. Grease them well and preheat them in the oven before the batter goes in.
- The batter is very thinThree cups of milk to two and a quarter cups of flour gives something closer to crepe batter than muffin batter. That is intentional for steam leavening, but it will run, so fill each cup only halfway.
- Beating the whites separatelySeparately beaten whites turn up often in batters of this kind. Whisk the yolks, milk, flour, salt and butter smooth first, then fold the whites in last and bake immediately.
- Rest the batter if you canA half-hour at room temperature lets the flour hydrate, which may help the rise; fold the whites in after the rest, not before. The original assumes you mix and bake.
- Do not open the ovenPopover structure depends on trapped steam, and a door opened in the first 20 minutes risks collapsing them.
- Butter measureThree teaspoonfuls of melted butter is about half an ounce — a modest enrichment, not a substitute for greasing the cups.
- YieldA batch this size makes well over a dozen in standard muffin cups filled halfway, and more than one deep popover pan's worth. Serve straight from the oven; they deflate within minutes and go leathery if held.
"Tea puffs" places the dish at the afternoon tea table rather than at breakfast, but the formula is the popover — a batter risen by steam alone, generally traced to the drippings-baked English batter puddings that Yorkshire pudding is also said to come from. American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century print closely related batters under a scatter of names: popovers, breakfast puffs, Boston puffs, tea puffs. The variation in naming reflects how these books circulated, with recipes copied between them and retitled to suit the meal the author had in mind. The instruction to beat whites and yolks separately is a signature of the period: commercial baking powder was on sale from the 1850s and 1860s and common well before 1900, but cooks trained on earlier methods kept the egg-white technique in batters where they wanted lightness.