The best Yorkshire pudding recipe to make with a roast

A good Yorkshire pudding is a thing of beauty, whether you choose whether to make puffy individual puddings or go the traditional route and make one big one, which will be crisp around the edges but have more of the gorgeously custardy, squidgy middle.

Although they are the classic shape these days, the round puddings were originally called 'Yorkshire puffs' and came about as a way of saving oven space: cooks simply dolloped spoonfuls of the batter around the roasting meat, directly into the hot fat.

Quite why the batter pudding is associated with Yorkshire isn't clear, but the prefix 'Yorkshire' appears in the first written recipe of it, by Hannah Glasse in 1747, in her book, The Art of Cookery Plain and Simple. She seasoned the batter with ginger and grated nutmeg and cooked it below a joint of 'beef, mutton or a loin of veal'.

Whatever your preferred serving method, Yorkshire puddings...