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Dessert

Pop Overs

A light, airy baked batter made with eggs, milk, flour, salt, and butter, poured into cups and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pop Overs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs until very light using a Dover egg-beater.

  3. Mix the salt and flour together.

  4. Gradually add the milk to the flour mixture to avoid lumps, beating steadily.

  5. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  6. Finally, add the melted butter and mix to combine.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into well-buttered earthen cups, filling them two-thirds full.

  2. Place the cups on a baking sheet and bake on the oven floor for 45 minutes.

  3. Do not open the oven for at least 25 minutes to ensure they puff up.

  4. After baking, let them dry out for 5 minutes with the oven door partly open.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift as the beaten eggs set the batter during baking.
Pastry flour
Forms the gluten framework that holds the batter's shape as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture that turns to steam, helping the popovers rise.
Melted butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Do not open the oven for at least 25 minutes. Opening the oven drops the temperature and releases the steam that drives the rise, so the popovers may collapse before the structure sets.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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