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Recipe for "pond-popovers"

NAME

     POND-POPOVERS - Popovers from the Jordan Pond teahouse
     In Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor  Maine,  is  Jordan
     Pond.  A century ago the teahouse at Jordan Pond was a gath-
     ering place where the aristocracy had tea and popovers  with
     strawberry jam each day at 4 o'clock.
     The Jordan Pond Tea House burned down in 1978, but has  been
     rebuilt.  It  now  serves people sporting clothes announcing
     ``mommy and daddy went to Naugatuck, and all they brought me
     was  this crummy shirt'', and who show up in station wagons,
     but the popovers are the same that were served to  the  idle
     rich of another era.

INGREDIENTS (2 large popovers)

     2         large eggs
     250 ml    whole milk
     100 g     all-purpose flour
     2.5 ml    salt
     1 ml      baking soda

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Preheat oven to 220 deg. C.  Beat the eggs at high
               speed  with  an  electric  mixer for 3 minutes, or
               until the mixture turns lemon yellow.
          (2)  Slow the mixer to a crawl, and dribble in  125  ml
               of milk, taking about 20 seconds to pour it in.
          (3)  Into another bowl, sift 100 g flour then add  salt
               and  baking  soda  and  sift again. With the mixer
               still running on its slowest speed,  add  the  dry
               ingredients to the eggs and milk.
          (4)  Turn the mixer off and use  a  rubber  spatula  to
               make  sure  that  all  of the flour has blended in
               with the liquid.
          (5)  Set the mixer to medium speed and dribble  in  the
               remaining milk. Blend for 1 minute.
          (6)  Turn the mixer to its highest speed and  beat  for
               10 minutes (or 5 minutes if you have a Kitchen-aid
               style mixer that uses a wire  whip  for  beating).
               Extra beating can't hurt.
          (7)  Filter  the  batter  through  a  fine-mesh  screen
               strainer  to  remove  any  lumps,  then  pour into
               well-buttered popover cups or  custard  cups.  (If
               you  must  use  a  muffin  tin,  fill  only  the 4
               corners.)
          (8)  Bake at 220 deg. C for 15 minutes. Without opening
               the  oven, turn heat to 175 deg. C and bake for 15
               more minutes (20 minutes if your oven door  has  a
               window).

NOTES

     Serve  immediately,  with  fresh  jam  and  room-temperature
     butter.
     These popovers turn out significantly  better  if  they  are
     baked  in  crockery  custard  cups  rather  than in metal or
     glass.

RATING

     Difficulty: moderate.   Time:  15  minutes  preparation,  30
     minutes baking.  Precision: measure carefully.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Brian Reid
     DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto CA
     reid@decwrl.DEC.COM -or- {ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,sun,pyramid}!decwrl!reid