4 oz plain flour
2 eggs
1/2 pint of milk
Pinch of salt
Mix, leave for an hour and the cook in a very hot oven until risen.
The above recipe is one of the signature dishes of England. It takes four basic ingredients to produce the most velvety and silky savoury pudding.
I have always been fascinated by how the pudding rises. There are no raising agents, like yeast or baking powder. But once the liquidy mixture is poured into the melted fat and sentenced to a very hot oven, it slowly begins to rise.
The myth in my family was you couldn’t open the oven to see what was going on, as the rising wouldn’t then occur. It was like a good magic trick. The magic only works, if you don’t know how it’s done.
As said in the title, this is divine magic. Something so delicious and delightful from paltry ingredients, could be a proof for the existence of God.
Similarly, England is like this. It is a magic trick. From what appears to be cultural chaos, an irregular constitution and bizarre local rituals, the English have stumbled across order, rule of law and stable institutions.
This enchanted place, full of native magic, rose like a Yorkshire pudding. We don’t really know how it happened, but by all appearances, it seemed to work.
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