Psst…one of my favorite food memories is not a cherished, family recipe. It actually comes from a lifetime of ladies’ lunches at a Twin Cities’ mall.
When I was growing up, my mom and I loved regular trips to the Southdale Mall. Sometimes, my Grandma Frances would join us and later in life, my own daughters joined in the tradition. Sure, the shopping was fun, but the real highlight was a visit to the cozy restaurant on the lower level of Dayton’s for lunch and, most importantly—the popovers!
We couldn’t wait to place our order as that meant we were one step closer to the moment when the wait staff would return with our perfectly pillowy popovers, served slightly warm with a pat of butter on the side.
Even though the restaurant’s name changed through the years as Dayton’s morphed into Marshall Field’s and then Macy’s (that’s a whole other unfortunate story!), we still returned year after year to enjoy those popovers that seemed impossible to replicate in our home kitchen.
Fast forward to today, I was so excited to learn that my aunt Mary also shares an appreciation (obsession?!) for Macy’s popovers and has been quietly working on perfecting a recipe and techniques for a homemade version. Better yet, with the help of her granddaughter Nina, she recently mastered a recipe that has become an essential part of their family’s holiday meals and was willing to share it with me!
“We look forward to those huge, puffy, steamy creations with soft, doughy interiors just like they serve at Macy’s Lakeshore Grill, or Dayton’s as we still refer to it in at our house,” said Mary, whose holiday meal notes indicate her journey to make popovers began in about 1995. “On Thanksgiving that year, I pried crumbled pieces of 12 popovers from cast-iron pans. My notes from that year say, ‘need new pans or a new recipe. Or both.’”
The Path to Perfect Popovers
Even though she enjoyed some success along the way, Mary said there were some “fairly spectacular failures.” After making several versions of recipes and trying many, many different pans, she said the result was “muffin-like objects without the pop that often resulted in a smoke-filled kitchen from hot oil dripping onto the floor of the oven.”
Instead of giving up, Mary made it her mission to learn more about this mysterious baked good—one that seems simple with five basic ingredients (eggs, flour, milk, butter or oil and salt), but one that has many different recipes with differing tips for success.
Her decades-long process included:
- Testing each type of recommended pan, from regular muffin tins to cast-iron or aluminum popover pans—nonstick or not—as well as simple custard cups.
- Adjusting the ingredients based on different recipes, which varied from four to six large eggs and either whole milk or part milk and part water.
- Preheating the pans and greasing them with butter, clarified or not, vegetable oil, cooking spray or butter on the bottom and cooking spray on the sides. Mary notes this turned out to be crucial step in determining whether the kitchen would fill with smoke and set off the smoke detector!
Science to the Rescue
With varying levels of popover success through the years (along with more than a few smoke alarms), Mary was thankful when Nina, now 15, stepped in several years ago to help with the holiday baking.
“Despite setbacks, the two of us finally persevered when science came to our rescue,” said Mary. “Recognizing that each type of oil has its own smoking point, we discovered that some recipes predictably filled our kitchen with smoke simply because the recommended oven temperature exceeded the smoking point of the recommended fat or oil.”
According to Mary, things suddenly began to make sense. They found that safflower oil, with a smoking point of 550 degrees and well above any oven temperature they would ever use, was the answer they were looking for.
“Finally, we could make popovers without opening windows or using a fan!” said Mary. “This works for us and is our reward for not giving up in our pursuit of a pretty good popover.”
Special thanks to Mary and Nina for sharing their recipe and their pursuit of the perfect popover!
