The three principal ingredients for the batter are eggs, milk and flour, together with a pinch of salt. These are mixed together and then allowed to stand for half an hour or so. The baking tin is then primed with fat – beef or bacon dripping are traditional, but these days butter or oil may well be used – and pre-heated in a high oven until it is smoking-hot. When ready, the batter is poured into the pudding-tins, and cooked for around 15 minutes or until the puddings have risen like little soufflés.

They must be served straight away, as they will gradually collapse like leaking balloons as they cool down. When fresh from the oven, they have a delicate crispness to the outer surface, which however is quickly sogged with meat juices and gravy on the diner’s plate. This is not a drawback. It is precisely for their absorbent quality that they are so prized.

A history

It was the Georgian cookery writer Hannah Glasse, author of The Art Of Cookery (1747), who first called this recipe Yorkshire Pudding. Prior to that, it was more prosaically known as Dripping Pudding. Whether it was actually invented in Yorkshire remains a moot point, but the name has stuck ever since, and it is therefore to the county of Yorkshire that the credit for this world-famous batter pudding formula will eternally go.

Originally, the pudding was served as a preliminary course before the meat appeared. It was baked underneath the spit-roasting meat, so that it was spattered with the meat’s juices, and would generally have some gravy poured on it when it was served. Its purpose was to part-fill the stomach in advance of the meat, so that a little of the beef (which may be well all each person could afford to be allotted anyway) would then go a long way. In a minority of households, the Yorkshire pudding was served after the beef, rather in the way that Chinese families fill up with rice after the main dishes have been eaten.

Any leftover Yorkshire could also be eaten cold as a sweet course, spread with jam, sprinkled with dried fruit or dolloped with cream, if it was available. Although the batter isn’t sweet, it nonetheless has a cakey texture that makes an acceptable foundation to a sweet treat.

Yorkshires today

Nowadays, it is inevitably possible to buy ready-made Yorkshire puddings for reheating in the microwave, a shortcut that would have made John Bull cry himself to sleep for the last of England. They aren’t difficult to make after all, and if you’re roasting a joint of beef anyway, you may as well go the whole hog. Antony Worrall Thompson’s Ready Steady Cook recipe for the BBC is as simple as they get:

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/yorkshirepudding_67385.shtml