The texture of a Yorkshire pudding is nothing like a pudding in the modern sense of the word. Not a custard, it's more like a cross between a soufflé and a cheese puff (without the cheese). The batter is like a very thin pancake batter, which you pour into a hot casserole dish over drippings from roast beef or prime rib. It then puffs up like a chef's hat, only to collapse soon after you remove it from the oven.
Given that it's loaded with beef drippings (read fat) or butter, or both, Yorkshire pudding is probably not the thing you want to eat regularly if you are watching your waistline. But for a once a year indulgence, served alongside a beef roast? Yummmmm.
Yorkshire pudding is traditionally made in one pan (even more traditionally in the pan catching the drippings from the roast above). You can also make a popover version with the same batter and drippings in a muffin tin or popover pan.
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp melted butter
2 eggs, beaten*
2-4 Tbsp of roast drippings
* If you double the recipe, add an extra egg to the batter.
Preparation:
1 Sift together the flour and salt in a large bowl. Form a well in the center. Add the milk, melted butter, and eggs and beat until the batter is completely smooth (no lumps), the consistency of whipping cream. Let sit for an hour.
2 Heat oven to 450°F. Add roast drippings to a 9x12-inch pyrex or ceramic casserole dish, coating the bottom of the dish. Heat the dish in the oven for 10 minutes.
For a popover version you can use a popover pan or a muffin pan, putting at least a teaspoon of drippings in the bottom of each well, and place in oven for just a couple minutes.
3 Carefully pour the batter into the pan (or the wells of muffin/popover pans, filling just 1/3 full), once the pan is hot. Cook for 15 minutes at 450°F, then reduce the heat to 350°F and cook for 15 to 20 more minutes, until puffy and golden brown.
Cut into squares to serve. Serves 6.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first ever recorded recipe appears in a book, The Whole Duty of a Woman in 1737 and listed as A Dripping Pudding - the dripping coming from spit-roast meat.
'Make a good batter as for pancakes; put in a hot toss-pan over the fire with a bit of butter to fry the bottom a little then put the pan and butter under a shoulder of mutton, instead of a dripping pan, keeping frequently shaking it by the handle and it will be light and savoury, and fit to take up when your mutton is enough; then turn it in a dish and serve it hot.'
The next recorded recipe took the strange pudding from local delicacy to become the nation's favorite dish following publication in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse in 1747. As one of the most famous food writers of the time, the popularity of the book spread the word of the Yorkshire Pudding. 'It is an exceeding good Pudding, the Gravy of the Meat eats well with it,' states Hannah.
"Take a quart of milk, four eggs, and a little salt, make it up into a thick batter with flour, like a pancake batter. You must have a good piece of meat at the fire, take a stew-pan and put some dripping in, set it on the fire, when it boils, pour in your pudding, let it bake on the fire till you think it is high enough, then turn a plate upside-down in the dripping-pan, that the dripping may not be blacked; set your stew-pan on it under your meat, and let the dripping drop on the pudding, and the heat of the fire come to it, to make it of a fine brown. When your meat is done and set to table, drain all the fat from your pudding, and set it on the fire again to dry a little; then slide it as dry as you can into a dish, melt some butter, and pour into a cup, and set in the middle of the pudding. It is an exceeding good pudding, the gravy of the meat eats well with it."
Mrs Beeton may have been Britain's most famous food writer of the 19th century but her recipe omitted one of the fundamental rules for making Yorkshire pudding - the need for the hottest oven possible. The recipe was further wrong by stating to cook the pudding in advance before placing it under the meat an hour before needed. Yorkshire folk blame her error on her southern origins.
Mrs Beeton's Recipe - 1866
1½ pints milk
6 large tbsp flour
3 eggs
1 saltspoon salt
Put the flour into a basin with the salt and gradually stir in enough milk to make it a stiff batter. When it is perfectly smooth and all the lumps are well rubbed down, add the remaining milk and the eggs, which should be well beaten. Beat the mixture for a few minutes. Pour into a shallow baking tin, which has been previously well rubbed with beef dripping. Put the pudding into the oven. Bake it for an hour. Then, for another 30 minutes, place it under the meat, to catch a little of the gravy that flows from it. Cut the pudding into small square pieces, put them on a hot dish and serve. If the meat is baked, the pudding may at once be placed under it, resting the former on a small three cornered stand.
Time: 1½ hour.
Sufficient for 5 or 6 persons. Seasonable at any time.
Popovers vs. Yorkshire Pudding:
James Beard, cook & author, has said that the resemblance between Yorkshire pudding and popovers is coincidental, because the popover has gone through several changes before becoming the recipe that it is now. He further stated that popovers are purely American. Popovers have also been called Laplanders and puff pops.
The popover is an American version of Yorkshire pudding and similar batter puddings made in England since the 17th century.
Ogden Nash, poet, inverts the historical order of events.
Let's call Yorkshire puddingA fortunate blunder:
It's a sort of popover
That turned and popped under.
0 comments:
Post a Comment