Yorkshire Pudding - Recipes, History, Trivia

Yorkshire Pudding - History of the Dish

A poll by UKTV, asking which British food had the greatest contribution to world cuisine, ranked Yorkshire Pudding as number three, right behind Worcestershire Sauce, and Cheddar Cheese. (The British sure like to name their edibles after places, don't they?) The earliest citations for the dish seem to be from the middle of the 18th century. Often cited are a 1737 recipe for Dripping Pudding in The Whole Duty of a Woman, and, in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, (1747), by Hannah Glasse, the first use of the name Yorkshire Pudding.

It took a century to take root in the United States. Marion Harland was the first to include it in a cookbook on this side of the Atlantic. In her Common Sense in the Household from 1878, while listing the dish as Yorkshire Pudding, she says the cook who introduced the dish to her family called it "Auction Pudding". This recipe varies from the usual in that it calls for separating the eggs. In The Original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, from 1896, Mrs. Farmer published a classic version, reproduced below.

In a 1909 newspaper column called "Housekeepers' Exchange", a housewife of the time has asked for the Old English recipe for Yorkshire Pudding. The easy-to-make recipe was given as follows: Beat three eggs thoroughly, add a level teaspoonful of salt and one pint of milk, pour one-half a cupful of this mixture on two-thirds of a cupful of flour, and stir to a paste. Add the remainder and beat. Bake in gem pans for 45 minutes, baste with beef drippings and serve as a garnish for roast beef.

Recipes

Yorkshire Pudding
Printable version of recipe
This version is from Fanny Merritt Farmer's The Original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.
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1 cup milk
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt

Mix salt and flour, and add milk gradually to form a smooth paste; then add eggs beaten until very light. Cover bottom of hot pan with some of beef fat tried out from roast, pour mixture in pan one-half inch deep. Bake twenty minutes in hot oven, basting after well risen, with some of the fat from the pan in which meat is roasting. Cut in squares for serving. Bake, if preferred, in greased, hissing hot iron gem pans.

1920 vintage Advertisement for a store holding a demonstration of "something new - something different" : The Non-Stick Gem Pan. "No Greasing, No Sticking, No Worries, Just Smiles". During the demonstration, the Non-Stick Gem Pans were availabe for purchase for a discount price of just 98 cents. (YummyEats Note: Gem Pans can be used for Yorkshire Pudding, as seen in recipes on this page. Like a muffin tin; -- gem pans were often cast-iron.)

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