In Praise of ... Yorkshire Pudding

Fat, butter, batter. You do not have to think very long to imagine what William the Conqueror's health and safety inspectors must have said when they first encountered yorkshire pudding. Fortunately they left this finest of native British dishes intact, probably on the grounds that it would kill off with cholesterol any Saxon warriors who had survived the arrows of Hastings. Thus we retained what would now surely qualify as a World Heritage Dish, were there such a ranking, and have since refined it to the extent that tomorrow is British Yorkshire Pudding Day. Yorkshire may bridle at the British bit, on the grounds that you must either be in the county or from it to get the secrets of the recipe right. The key points, if you propose to mark the day with puddings, are a) make your yorkshire dinner plate-size and serve it alone, to meet its old virtue of filling everyone up so that they do not need pricey meat to follow, and b) find someone with a pan which has seldom, if ever, been cleaned. Like scrumpy cider, which is all the better for a few old bicycles and underclothes dissolved in it during fermentation, yorkshire pudding benefits from absorbing as much of its surroundings as possible. In this it resembles the county which, for all its chauvinist name, has always welcomed and profited from Scots, Asians and all other comers-in. A proper Yorkshire mixture. Yorkshire mixture, of course, is a type of sweet, and one which would make a very acceptable dessert tomorrow.