Yorkshire Pudding - Pop overs - Batter Bread

Yorkshire Pudding, also known as popovers in America are a wonderfully simple and delicious treat either warm or cold. A HISTORY LESSON: Yorkshire Pudding originated a long time before it got it's name. It used to be called "batter pudding", which were well known in England in many forms. Here is one of the original printed recipes for Yorkshire Pudding. Hannah Glasse's recipe [1747] "A Yorkshire Pudding. Take a quart of milk, four eggs, and a little salt, make it up into a thick batter with flour, like 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 nigh 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 sent 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 it into a cup, and set it in the middle of the pudding. It is an excellent good pudding; the gravy of athe meat eats well with it." ---The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, Mrs. Glasse, facsimile 1805 edition, introduced by Karen Hess [Applewood Books:Massachusetts] 1997 (p. 101-2) The recipes that I found call for equal portions, by volume, of eggs, milk and flour combined with a pinch of salt. More modernly you will see recipes that call for baking soda or powder, but these are not traditional. Baking soda and baking powder were not invented until the 19th century. Besides the egg act as it's leavening. You can watch it being made here: http://britishfood.about.com/od/regionalenglishrecipes/r/yorkspuds.htm Here is her written recipe: Ingredients: * 4 large, fresh eggs, measured in a jug * Equal quantity of milk to eggs * Equal quantity of all purpose/plain flour to eggs * Pinch of salt * 2 tbsp lard, beef dripping or vegetable oil Preparation: Serves 6 * Heat the oven to the highest temperature possible, however, do not exceed 450F/230C or the fat may burn. * Pour the eggs and milk into a large mixing bowl and add the pinch of salt. Whisk thoroughly with an electric hand beater or hand whisk. Leave to stand for 10 minutes. * Gradually sieve the same volume of flour (as the eggs) into the milk and egg mixture, again using an electric hand beater or hand-whisk to create a lump free batter resembling thick cream, if there are any lumps pass the batter through a fine sieve. * Leave the batter to rest in the kitchen for a minimum of 30 minutes, longer if possible - up to several hours. * Place a pea-sized piece of lard, dripping or ½tsp vegetable oil in a Yorkshire pudding tin (4 x 2"/5cm hole tin) or 12-hole muffin tin and heat in the oven until the fat is smoking. Give the batter another good whisk adding 2 tbsps of cold water and fill a third of each section of the tin with batter and return quickly to the oven. * Leave to cook until golden brown approx 20 minutes. Repeat the last step again until all the batter is used up. I would have done well to read this before I made mine, as the video says to turn your oven to the highest temperature. That puts my oven at 550, well over the 450 the recipe says not to exceed. It burned the fat to the point that I had to fan out my house for hours, but not enough to ruin the fat, though a few of my puddings did burn.