Déjà Vu: The Victorian Yorkshire Pudding Experiment

Today is Déjà Vu Blogfest day, so there will be no Friday Fives on the blog today. Everyone taking part in this blogfest (click on the link to see who’s participating) is posting their favorite blog article, or a blog article they wrote that they think deserves more attention. My blog is about writing, theology, and life, not cooking, but I had as much fun writing this article from October of this year as I did doing the experiment. And the experiment was for my current Work in Progress, so it is sort-of relevant to writing. Don’t forget to check out the blogs of other participants today!

If you know anything about my WIP (see the WIP tab above), you’ll know that it’s set in Victorian London. Although I’ve been into British history for many years, the Victorian period never held my interest that much, so my knowledge and resources on the topic are lacking. Now that I have a WIP set during that time, I’ve been forced into buying books and researching Victorian life. One of the books I bought gave a “recipe” for Yorkshire Pudding that was popular in the Victorian period. I don’t think I’ve had Yorkshire Pudding since I’ve been in the States–and that’s a long time! I used to love Yorkshire Pudding. When I was at university, my friends and I used to go to a pub in a small town just outside Hull called Skidby, where they served what they called “Man-sized Yorkshire Pudding.” One serving looked like a small loaf of bread, and it came with your choice of gravy. Being vegetarian, I would get their mushroom gravy. It was the best!

Anyway, for the sake of research, and to relive the taste of this classic British dish, this past Saturday I decided to have a go at making Yorkshire Pudding, but to do it as per the directions in this book–supposedly as the Victorians would have made it. I am by no means a chef, or really have any culinary expertise. In fact, I have a sense of adventure in the kitchen that is vastly disproportionate to my skill. I’m like the feisty kitten hissing at the pit bull: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is, well, woefully inadequate. Nevertheless, this is research, so I gather my ingredients and set to work!

Here are the ingredients and directions as presented in the book. Bear in mind, this is not from a recipe book; it’s from a book about life in Victorian England, and was presented for historical interest:

Put into a bowl:

• 6 tablespoons of flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 pint of milk

The book said to mix these to form a thick batter, being sure to remove all the lumps. Then add another half pint of milk and three well-beaten eggs. Mix these all together, then transfer to a well-greased shallow baking tin. Bake in the oven for 1 hour. Cut into squares to serve. This would serve six people.

When I saw “1 pint of milk” and “serves six,” I immediately wondered if perhaps this might be too much, and I should only make a half recipe. Then my wife called (she was out of town and due home later that evening), and when I told her what I was doing, she told me to save her some in case it turned out tasty. She’s not always such an optimist, but because of this, I decided what-the-heck and poured a pint of milk into a bowl. I then hunted out a tablespoon measure. When I found it, I looked at it long and hard. Six of these into that sea of milk? Will that really make any difference? I’ve made sauces before, and I can’t imagine that much flour doing anything more than making floury-milk. I took the measure to my oldest daughter. “Is this really one tablespoon? Isn’t it a little small?” She said it looked about the right size. Not to doubt my firstborn, but just to be absolutely sure, I took the tablespoon to second-born (both of whom have been trained in culinary arts at the apron-strings of their very skilled mother) and asked the same. She pulled herself away from the episode of Detective Conan she was watching online (in Japanese with English subs–the only way to watch it, in her opinion) to glance at the measure and concur with her older sibling. I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe the Victorians knew something I don’t.

In this case, it appears they didn’t, and my suspicions proved correct. I tipped six of these tablespoons into the bowl of milk, and I beat it within an inch of its life, hoping that all this effort would magically rouse some dormant power within the flour to grow and consume all of that milk. As I beat and beat and whisked and whisked, the milk spashed, and sploshed, and didn’t once even hint at glooping or glopping. A “thick batter” this was not. Perhaps the Victorians had a different kind of flour, one with super absorbent ability that has been lost to us through years of bleaching and treating? Or perhaps these are UK measurements, and most of my measuring equipment is American? I went to my computer, googled up a conversion table, and saw that, in the grand scheme of things, the difference wasn’t that significant. In other words, 1 UK tablespoon does not equal 3 US tablespoons. It’s a fractional difference. And I needed more than fractions here.

What to do? Well, I couldn’t waste a pint of milk. And my wife and children were expecting Yorkshire Pudding. So I did what I thought any good Victorian housewife or maid would do: improvise! (I don’t know this for a fact, but the Victorians were very creative and inventive people.) I began slowly adding more flour to my ocean of milk until it began to stodgify. It took in total (including the six measly tablespoons I had already added) about 2-2.5 cups of flour to get it to what I thought qualified as a “thick batter.” The recipe then instructed me to add another half pint of milk. I looked at my beautiful, creamy, thick batter and thought are you kidding? After all, the recipe had not proven itself worthy of my trust thus far, and I was afraid it was about to destroy my wonderful batter. But then I remembered this is a research project; I needed to be as authentic as possible, so I compromised. I added a quarter pint of milk, and three eggs I had beaten together earlier (I can beat eggs, and I can do it with a fork better than a whisk–one of the few kitchen tricks my mother taught me, and it has served me well). When the batter was as lump-free as I could get it with my whisk, I was ready for the final stage: baking.

I looked and looked, but we didn’t have the kind of baking tin I thought would be appropriate, so I used a casserole dish, and one that I thought large enough to handle all this batter. Traditionally, “well-greased” for the Victorians meant “greased with bacon fat,” or some kind of meat fat. Being vegetarian, I used vegetable oil and mixed in some of a vegetable OXO cube for flavoring (OXO cubes courtesy of my mother–thanks mum!). I then poured in the batter. It looked a bit like cream… or wallpaper paste. Either way, it looked right. I was content. Now to actually cook the thing.

As you probably noticed, the recipe just said to “bake in the oven for 1 hour.” This would actually be a pretty meaningless direction to a Victorian maid or housewife before around 1860, when iron stoves started to become standard fare in the kitchen. Up to that time, most cooking was done over an open fire. Remember the scene in “A Muppet Christmas Carol” at Bob Cratchett’s house, where Rizzo the Rat finds himself tied to the spit in the fireplace? That was actually historically accurate to how cooking would have been done at the time the novella was published (1843)–albeit without the Muppets. (By the way, this is, IMO, the best version of A Christmas Carol EVER–and if you haven’t seen it, you need to!) The Yorkshire Pudding would have hung somewhere underneath the meat (probably not rat) so the fat from the meat would fall onto it, giving it flavor.

I don’t have access to an open fire, so I have to make do with the oven. But what temperature? Second-born suggested 350F, which sounded good to me–not too hot so that it wouldn’t burn. I would then use the oven light to monitor its progress. So I preheated the oven, and then popped it in when it reached temperature. I waited about 40 minutes, checking periodically, and then set about making the gravy.

There wasn’t a Victorian recipe for gravy in the book (and, as noted above, if cooked in the open fire, gravy wouldn’t be necessary thanks to the meat fat), but I knew I needed to make some kind of gravy to go with it. So this is the part where I stray from the experiment for the sake of recreating my Yorkshire Pudding memories (Skidby… Man-Sized Yorkshire Pudding…). I like my gravy thick, but I couldn’t find a nice simple thick-gravy recipe. So I looked over some not-so-simple thick-gravy recipes, and using what rudimentary knowledge of cooking I have, figured out the basic components. Here’s my recipe:

• 2 OXO cubes dissolved in 4 cups of boiling water
• 1/3 cup of flour
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon of powdered garlic (I might have used fresh crushed garlic if we had some–but we didn’t)
• A dash of ginger (I used powdered, but I suppose you could use minced, crushed, or somehow pulverized fresh ginger)
• 1/2 bag of Gardein Homestyle Beefless Tips (these are amazingly good!)

I microwaved the beefless tips and then chopped them up–you could leave them chunky, but then you would be making stew, not gravy. In an appropriately-sized pot, I boiled 4 cups of water, then slowly crumbled in the OXO cubes. Once added, I turned the heat down and stirred for a while, making sure the cubes had dissolved into the water. In another pot, I heated the vegetable oil and added the garlic and ginger, stirring until the mixture started to brown. At this point I gradually added the flour, mixing it in until it formed a thick and stodgy paste. I then took up my handy-dandy whisk and slowly added the OXO-water broth, letting it work into the paste, trying not to make the resulting sauce lumpy. When I had added about half the broth, I threw in (or gently tipped in–depending on your mood) the beefless tips, stirring the whole time to blend them in. Then came the rest of the broth–gradually, mind–you don’t want lumpy gravy! Once everything was mixed together, and the resulting gravy looked as smooth and creamy as I could get it, I let it simmer until the Yorkshire Pudding was done.

After an hour had elapsed, I removed the Yorkshire Pudding from the oven and stuck a knife in it. The bottom still appeared to be gloopy, so I put it back in for another ten minutes. I repeated this at five or ten minute intervals. Finally, after an extra half hour, the top was browning nicely and I was afraid if I cooked it much longer the thing would burn, so I called it as-done-as-it’s-going-to-be. Here’s a picture of the “finished” Yorkshire Pudding:

As you can see, it rose at least twice its size. The bottom part really wasn’t cooked enough, but at least it tasted close to what I remember of Yorkshire Pudding. (Second-born described the taste as a bit like a waffle.) If I were to make it again, I would probably use a larger, and more shallow, dish, or use multiple dishes with less batter… or make less batter!

The star of the show, at least for me, though, was the gravy. It was really really good! So good, in fact, I named it “Awesome Sauce” (and second-born threatened bodily violence upon me if I ever repeated such a bad pun in her presence). And it was the perfect compliment to the Yorkshire Pudding.

My three youngest children decided they wanted nothing to do with it. Second-born tried it with a little gravy, and decided she liked the Yorkshire Pud on its own. Firstborn wanted to take the “pudding” part literally: she had some with cinnamon sugar instead of gravy. I, of course, frowned at such an abuse of this great British classic, but she liked it that way. Oh well–at least she liked it. Third-born, my only son, proved his boyhood by enthusiastically devouring a large piece of both YP and gravy, and loving every bite. That’s my boy! 😀 My wife had a small piece and agreed that the gravy was good, but the YP needed to cook longer.

I might try this recipe again sometime (with some modifications), but first I want to try a “modern” recipe to see how it compares. But that won’t be for a while yet. If you’re feeling adventurous, why not give this a try? It could make an interesting addition to your Thanksgiving meal!