When wheat flour started to come into common use for making cakes and puddings, cooks in the north of Britain created a method of employing the fat that dropped into the dripping pan to prepare a batter pudding while the beef roasted. In 1737 a recipe for 'A dripping pudding ' was revealed in "the entire Duty of a Woman". Make a great batter as for pancakes; put in a hot toss-pan over the fire with a little bit of butter to cook the bottom a little then put the pan and butter under a shoulder of mutton, rather than a dripping pan, keeping often shaking it by the handle and it is going to be light and tasty, and fit to take up when your mutton is sufficient; then turn it in a dish and serve it hot.

Same instructions were publicity in 1747 in 'The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple' by Hannah Glasse under the title of 'Yorkshire pudding '. It was she who re-invented and re-named the first version, called Dripping Pudding, which had been cooked in England for decades, though these puddings were much flatter than the puffy versions known today. When beef was cooked on a spit, the pudding was baked beneath it to catch the drippings.

Now the roast is cooked in an enclosed stove, the Yorkshire pudding is cooked in a flat pan beside it. Yorkshire pudding is created by mixing a thin batter of flour, milk and eggs. The ingredients must be at 70 degrees or the pudding will not puff up. Hot fat drippings from the roast were poured into the baking pan, to about a quarter of an inch deep. Then, the good is poured into the pan and baked in the stove. The good should only half-fill pan and since the mixture will swell as it bakes, and if you over-fill the pan, it'll overflow and make an extremely huge baked-on mess in the base of your range.

Yorkshire pudding is the ancestor of the popover. Popovers are single Yorkshire puddings baked in muffin tins. Some recipes call for including herbs or garlic powder to flavour the pastry. Popovers that follow the standard Yorkshire pudding recipe of flour, milk, eggs and beef drippings can still be called Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding can lend a festive and conventional flair to a meal featuring a roast. Modern cooks must take the following care, however. Turn the exhaust fan in your range hood on. Grease from the pudding pan will be bubble out from under the batter as it rises and it'll smoke and burn. You may even need to disconnect or take away the battery from your smoke detector, if you do not need your dinner preparations to be interrupted by your smoke alarm going off.