Yorkshire Pudding !!!

So, following along from the explanation for Spotted Dick.  I now have to explain why we eat ‘Yorkshire Pudding’ with our main course !

Again, there is more than one explanation for this.  The first is quite simple.  The batter mix of flour, milk and eggs is often used for making cakes and puddings.  This was then just called ‘Yorkshire Pudding’ by people, with not much imagination, in Yorkshire and it was served with fruit or cream.  This is the most simple explanation and makes the pudding part of the Yorkshire Pudding sound how it is – a pudding !  I would just like to point out that no, I’m not one of these people from Yorkshire.

Obviously that happened first.  The second explanation is that some cooks used fat from the dripping pan while cooking the meat and added it to the batter mix.  This was then cooked in the oven and served with the meat because with the taste of the dripping in it, it was classed as a savoury and not a sweet anymore but just kept to the name of Yorkshire Pudding !

I just like to think we call it Yorkshire Pudding because we are a slightly odd country !  My mum says that she remembers her dad eating a roast dinner with Yorkshire Pudding.  She said that if there was any of the Yorkshire Pudding left after he had finished his main course he would then stew some apples or other fruit and put it with the Yorkshire Pudding and have that as his dessert.  See.  Slightly odd.  I wouldn’t remember this as I was only four when that grandad died !

I also remember going to a friends house once and she was wondering why, after about an hour and a half, her Yorkshire Puddings weren’t cooking very quick.  She was a year or so older than me and had just moved in with her boyfriend.  I just casually asked her if she made sure the fat/oil was really, really hot before she put the batter mix in the oven.  It was when she just said ‘hot?’ that I knew what had happened.  I think she was quite glad when ‘Aunt Bessie’s’ were invented !!!