My boys’ eyes used to light up when roast beef was on the menu, because they knew Yorkshire Puddings might just be in the offing.  Great big crispy-topped puffs with an almost custardy interior were receptacles for large quantities of gravy.  I would make 12 yorkies in muffins pans, which you think might be adequate for the 4 or 5 folks at the table, but there was always someone at the end of the meal wishing there had been just one left to fill the remaining empty space in their appetite.  My dad used to call a final slice of bread and gravy at the end of a meal a “Ukrainian Sundae”; the last Yorkie was its English cousin.

At cooking school, we were taught the classic ratio:  equal parts by volume of eggs, milk and flour would yield the desired result.  Many family recipes, and indeed many cookbook recipes and a few internet recipes, skimp on the eggs.  If your Yorkshire puddings are unreliable performers, sometimes turning out like doughy little hockey pucks, too little egg may be part of the problem.

I spent a happy few years developing and testing recipes for a living, so testing day is always a joy for me.  I wanted to develop a one-egg Yorkshire Pudding recipe for the toaster oven.  Eggs come in a range of sizes from Peewee to Jumbo, but most of us buy large eggs.  A large egg measures out just shy of ¼ cup, so for my first trial I fudged a little and tried ¼ cup each of flour and milk with one egg.  Not bad, but not quite perfect.  I had better results with 1 egg, 3 Tablespoons of flour and 3 Tablespoons of milk.  Good.  Ratio established.  One pretty generously sized Yorkshire pudding with good loft and nice texture.

The second most important factor in making a perfect Yorkie is heat:  The oven, the pan and the oil should be “cracking hot” (which must be a proper culinary term, because every chef I have met uses it) before the batter goes in.  My son Mica will debate this point, but I have had mixed success with his “cold pan” method.  He can do it his way — I suggest you do it mine.