Skip to main content
Dessert

Pop Overs

Pop overs are a light, airy cake made from beaten egg, milk, salt, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pop Overs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the well-beaten egg and milk.

  2. Add a pinch of salt.

  3. Sift in the flour gradually, mixing well.

  4. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into heated greased pans.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg
Adds structure and helps set the batter as it bakes.
Milk
Supplies liquid that turns to steam, helping the popovers rise.
Flour
Provides the protein structure that holds the risen batter.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into heated greased pans.. The hot pans start the batter cooking immediately, so steam forms quickly and lifts the batter. Cold pans let it spread and rise poorly.

“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.

More popovers recipes

Graham 6Meat 3Whole Wheat 3 See all 249 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes