Before Yorkshire pudding became the crispy, golden companion to every Sunday roast in Britain, it was something rather more adventurous—a batter cooked directly beneath dripping meat, catching every precious drop of fat as it fell from the fire. Hannah Glasse first published her famous recipe for “A Yorkshire Pudding” in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy in 1747, and the method she describes is so delightfully strange to modern eyes that it deserves a proper translation. This is a Yorkshire pudding in 4 steps, exactly as an eighteenth-century cook would have understood it, with all the stew-pans, dripping, and fire-based baking that entails. Here are those four instructions, one at a time.

The Source: Hannah Glasse’s 1747 Cookbook

Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy first appeared in 1747, published anonymously under the byline “by a Lady.” The Yorkshire pudding recipe appears in the pudding chapter, just after “A Boiled Plumb-Pudding.” Glasse’s instructions assume you are cooking at an open fire with a piece of meat roasting there, a setup that explains some of the more peculiar details, like setting an upside-down plate in the dripping-pan and letting the dripping drop on the pudding as it cooks. The recipe is also, from a modern perspective, baffling until you understand what she is actually asking you to do.

The Original Recipe, Step by Step

Glasse’s instructions are written as a continuous paragraph, but they divide neatly into four stages: making the batter, starting the pudding on the fire, moving it under the meat, and finishing and serving. Here is every word of her original recipe, broken into those four steps with plain translations so you can follow along without needing to consult a culinary historian or an open hearth.

Our Modern Translation of the Recipe

Glasse cooks this pudding at an open fire, under a roasting piece of meat, which most of us do not have in the kitchen. The card below is our plain-language translation of her recipe. It keeps everything she says and adds nothing: where the original gives no amount, time or temperature, the card says so.

Our modern translation

A Yorkshire Pudding

From The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, 1747

Prep Not specified

Cook Not specified

Serves Not specified

Ingredients

• 1 quart milk (about 4 cups / 950 ml)
• 4 eggs
• A little salt
• Flour, enough to make a thick batter like pancake batter (amount not specified in the original)
• Dripping from roasting meat
• Butter, for serving

Instructions

1. 1 Mix the milk, eggs and salt, then add flour until you have a thick batter, like pancake batter. The original does not say how much flour.
2. 2 Have a good piece of meat roasting at the fire. Put some dripping in a stew-pan and set it on the fire. When the dripping boils, pour in the batter and let the pudding bake at the fire until you think it is nearly done.
3. 3 Turn a plate upside down in the dripping-pan, so the dripping does not burn black. Set the stew-pan on the plate, under the meat. Let the dripping from the meat fall onto the pudding while the heat of the fire browns it.
4. 4 When the meat is done and has been set on the table, drain all the fat from the pudding and set it on the fire again to dry a little. Then slide it, as dry as you can, into a dish. Melt some butter, pour it into a cup, and set the cup in the middle of the pudding.

Notes

Glasse writes: “It is an exceeding good Pudding, the Gravy of the Meat eats well with it.” The original gives no amount of flour, no cooking time and no temperature.

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What to Know Before You Cook It

To cook this exactly as Glasse wrote it, you would need an open fire with a piece of meat roasting at it, plus a stew-pan and a dripping-pan. The upside-down plate is the cleverest detail. It sits in the dripping-pan so the dripping does not burn black, and the stew-pan rests on it under the meat so the dripping drops straight onto the pudding.

Glasse gives no flour amount, no cooking time and no temperature, so we have not invented any for the card. Modern Yorkshire puddings are usually made as individual puddings in a muffin tin with exact measurements, which is a different recipe from hers. If you would like to cook one today, use a tested modern recipe, like the one in the box above.

The Drip That Launched a Thousand Puddings

Hannah Glasse’s Yorkshire pudding is a reminder that the best recipes often come from the simplest premise: do not let anything go to waste. A quart of milk, four eggs, some flour, and whatever dripping falls from your roast—this is peasant economy elevated to genuine deliciousness. Whether you attempt the full open-fire method or adapt it for your oven, you are participating in a tradition nearly three centuries old, one that transforms humble batter into something Glasse herself called “exceeding good.” The butter cup in the middle is optional, but honestly, why would you skip it?