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Dessert

Pop-overs

Pop-overs are small puffed breads made from a batter of flour, milk, eggs, and salt, baked in buttered jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter twelve small earthenware jars and place them in the oven to heat.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, milk, egg yolks, and salt to form a smooth batter.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Quickly fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into the hot buttered jars.

  2. Bake until the pop-overs rise and are brown at the sides.

  3. Turn them out of the jars and serve immediately on a hot dish covered with a napkin.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 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).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen popover walls in shape.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and the whites, beaten to stiff peaks, provide the air that lifts the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and turns to steam in the hot oven, helping the popovers rise.
Butter
Greases the hot jars so the batter releases cleanly and the outside browns.

The step that matters

Quickly fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. Egg white foam traps air that expands in the oven to lift the popovers. Overmixing or letting the foam deflate before baking leads to flat, dense results.

“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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