Christmas dinner: will Yorkshire puddings be on your plate?

Wrong!
Yorkshire’s go with owt, well, especially a roast! Christmas Day dinner is no exception. Yorkshire puddings deserve a place on your festive plate!
Being a Yorkshire lass, when I was young, my grandma always served the Yorkshire pudding first with homemade bone gravy that my grandad made over 3 days.

My grandpa could be like that sometimes. He was from the East Riding.

You should come around to my house and see my collection ! : )

Now there’s an offer. You might like to know that the Royal Society of Chemistry offered guidance on Yorkshire puddings a few years ago: http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/PerfectYorkshire.asp RSC does not seem to have considered the type of flour, which I suspect could have an effect on the results.

Interesting. 4″ !! that is one deep pudding.

They do mention plain flour in the recipe.

Here’s another one, Oscar, from a physicist with a penguin obsession: https://www.thecaterer.com/articles/25053/the-appliance-of-science

Edit: And another article: https://www.labnews.co.uk/features/christmas-chemistry-20-12-2010/

I’m not sure what the significance of the depth is, Patrick. It might make the top char before the bottom is cooked.

I do have Peter Barham’s “The Science of Cooking”. I must give it back to him : )

We used to attend the same conferences. Some others have dabbled in the science of cookery and there is even another book with the same title.

Well, it’s better than the cooking of science which too many people dabble in.

An understanding of science might not make you a better cook but it might help make you more wary of the false scientific claims that are made for some products.

So the blurb notes the ‘upsurge in home cooking over the past two decades”. I am afraid all I have noticed is the multitude of television programmes about home cooking, the vast volumes of ready meals flying out of the chilled cabinets in every store, and not a greengrocer left on the high street.

It is quite normal at this time of the year for nine out of ten books in the top ten best sellers to be cookery books of one sort or another. Yet as a nation we have one of the worst diets in the developed world, an obesity problem of obese proportions, and an almost pathological aversion to preparing a proper meal from fresh ingredients. So where does this informative literature end up, and how does Masterchef contribute to our general wellbeing and culinary satisfaction? Answers on a plate, please.

They’re waiting for when the gravy boat comes in.

I have never thought there was much taste in a Yorkshire pudding; it’s all about the texture, and the soggier the better in my view, but most people seem to like them done to a crisp.

Making Yorkshire puddings is not at all difficult but they need to be taken out of the oven while the base is still slightly soft; leaving them too long dries them out, and you end up with the cardboard example you might buy ready made. We can underrate some foods and miss out on its real pleasures when we rely on ready-made stuff.

At my Aunt’s, Christmas dinner of goose was preceded by home made Yorkshire pudding with gravy made from the goose juices. Delicious and, in true Yorkshire tradition, began to fill an empty tummy so not so much expensive food was needed.