Proof of the pudding

As a food writer I have long banged the drum for local produce and pointed out there is more to food in Yorkshire than Yorkshire puddings. Of course there is, but I will be the first to admit there's no other dish quite as famous.

Its origin is, as yet, unknown. There are no cave drawings, hieroglyphics and so far, no-one has unearthed a Roman Yorkshire pudding dish buried beneath the streets of York. It is to 1737 we have to go for the earliest, so far, printed reference for a "dripping pudding" in an anonymous compendium of recipes called The Whole Duty of a Woman.

My earliest food memory is of my grandmother's house in Meanwood in Leeds and her taking a tray of towering, golden puds from her Yorkshire Range. They were one of the first dishes my mother taught me to cook – though I still cannot replicate her ability to throw everything in a mixing bowl without measuring and using only a fork to produce amazing results.

My father firmly believed you should "never marry a woman who can't make Yorkshire Puddings." No pressure there then.

As a child I loved helping mum prepare Sunday lunch – Family Favourites on the wireless, her singing along to Johnny Mathis or Matt Monroe, my brothers playing outside and dad at the pub for

a pint.

Mum would make large puddings in a roasting tin which she then cut into hefty slabs, covered with gravy and served as a starter. For me, you could have stopped there. I would have been happy to eat the pudding for starter, main and (as we often did) smothered in jam or Golden Syrup for a pudding. The meat to me was the supporting act and I imagine for my parents, having filled us up on Yorkshires,

were thankful we children wanted less of it.

This tradition is one that continues in our house today where the aroma of Sunday lunch cooking transports me back to my childhood. When the children were all at home it was the one meal of the week when we all sat down together. It always amazed me that Josh, the youngest, could devour a dozen Yorkshire puddings in one sitting.

On my travels I have cooked them in many different countries and have yet to find someone who doesn't like them. This includes the French, who, when I lived there were dismissive – but often requested Yorkshire puddings when visiting. It's amazing that a mixture of flour, eggs, milk and salt captured not only this nation's heart but also others' hearts across the world and has done so for almost four centuries.

For a new book, I got to cook and the family to eat, hundreds of puddings for the purpose of photographs. The willingness of Yorkshire celebrities such as Dame Judi Dench, Rosemary Shrager, and Dickie Bird, to share their memories of the puds they had eaten was inspiring.

The most enjoyable part was investigating different cooking methods. It was an inquiry which opened the floodgates of opinion and myth. Instructions abound which insist Yorkshire puddings must be made standing up, sitting down; made outside, made inside with the windows closed, use a fork, a whisk, a spoon. Depending on who you listen to or what you read, Yorkshire pudding batter must be cold, must be warm…. You get the picture.

My conclusion? There is no definitive recipe for Yorkshire puddings, everyone has their own method and this is mine. It is one I have developed over the years to produce perfect puddings every time. Sorry Mum, there's no fork involved.

To order a copy of Elaine Lemm's Great Book of Yorkshire Pudding, ring our order line 01748 821122 Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. Or by post please send cheque/ postal order for 7.99 plus 2.75 p&p made payable to Yorkshire Books Ltd. Send to: Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond DL10 4QP.

My Recipe for Perfect Yorkshire Puddings Every Time

Serves 6

Ingredients: 4 large, fresh eggs, measured in a jug; Equal quantity of milk to eggs; Equal quantity of plain flour to eggs; Pinch of salt; Lard, beef dripping or vegetable oil for cooking;

Heat the oven to the highest temperature possible. Do not exceed 230C/450F/Gas 8 or the fat may burn.

Pour the eggs and milk into a large mixing bowl and add the pinch of salt. Whisk with an electric or hand whisk until foamy. Leave to stand for about 10 minutes to allow the bubbles to subside.

Sieve the flour into the milk and egg mixture. Beat again using an electric or hand-whisk to create a lump free batter resembling thick cream. Finally pass the batter through a sieve into another bowl or jug.

Leave the batter to rest in the kitchen for a minimum of 30 minutes up to a couple of hours.

Place a pea-sized piece of lard, dripping or tsp vegetable oil in a Yorkshire pudding tin (4 x 5cm/2in hole tin) or 12-hole muffin tin and heat in the oven until the fat is smoking.

Give the batter another whisk. Add 2 tbsp of cold water and fill a third of each section of the tin with batter and return quickly to the oven.

Leave to cook until risen and golden brown, approx 20 minutes. Repeat the last step again without adding any water until all the batter is used up.

Yorkshire puddings through history – and how Mrs Beeton got it wrong

First printed recipe, 263 years old, for Yorkshire pudding from The Whole Duty of a Woman:

"Make a good batter as for pancakes; put in a hot toss-pan over the fire with a bit of butter to fry the bottom a little then put the pan and butter under a shoulder of mutton, instead of a dripping pan, keeping frequently shaking it by the handle and it will be light and savoury, and fit to take up when your mutton is enough; then turn it in a dish and serve it hot."

The pancake batter was nothing new and had been used for centuries fried, cooked as fritters or boiled in oven cloths, but it was the placing of the batter under the roasting meat that transformed it into something that resembles what we now know as a Yorkshire pudding. Though the dripping pudding was thicker and flatter than a modern pudding it was also much richer in flavour because of the drippings and the fat from the meat. The meat mentioned is a shoulder of mutton but any meat could be used.

A Yorkshire Pudding by Hannah Glasse, 1747

"Take a quart of milk, four eggs, and a little salt, make it up into a thick batter with flour, like a pancake batter. You must have a good piece of meat at the fire, take a stew-pan and put some dripping in, set it on the fire, when it boils, pour in your pudding, let it bake on the fire till you think it is high enough, then turn a plate upside-down in the dripping-pan, that the dripping may not be blacked; set your stew-pan on it under your meat, and let the dripping drop on the pudding, and the heat of the fire come to it, to make it of a fine brown. When your meat is done and set to table, drain all the fat from your pudding, and set it on the fire again to dry a little; then slide it as dry as you can into a dish, melt some butter, and pour into a cup, and set in the middle of the pudding. It is an exceeding good pudding, the gravy of the meat eats well with it."

More than a century later the Yorkshire pudding made its appearance in Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. But, unlike Hannah Glasse, she omitted a fundamental rule – the need for the hottest oven possible. The recipe was further wrong by stating to cook the pudding in advance before placing it under the meat an hour before needed. Yorkshire folk blamed her southern origins.

YP MAG 30/10/10