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Popovers

Popovers are a light, airy bread made from eggs, flour, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Popovers

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. Beat the eggs very light.

  2. Mix the flour with part of the milk to form a smooth batter.

  3. Add the eggs and the remaining milk, then beat well.

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

Bake

  1. Heat the pans until very hot and well buttered.

  2. Fill the pans two-thirds full with the batter and bake.

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. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and milk 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and their moisture helps turn the batter into a liquid that puffs.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that holds the risen batter walls in shape as steam expands them.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, turning to steam in the oven to help the popovers rise.

The step that matters

Heat the pans until very hot and well buttered. The batter must hit a very hot pan so it sets quickly and rises rapidly. A cold or under-buttered pan lets the batter spread and stick, and the popovers will not puff as high.

“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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