“Gotta get some”: Dolly Parton’s unlikely adoration for Yorkshire puddings
Film, the steam locomotive, Sean Bean; Yorkshire has gifted the wider world with a lot over the centuries.
Perhaps one of the greatest assets of God’s Own Country, though, is not its rolling green hills, cultural contributions, or even the invention of the guillotine; instead, it is providing Dolly Parton with one of her all-time favourite snacks, the humble Yorkshire pudding.
First appearing in written form way back in the 18th century, that legendary concoction of eggs, flour, and water has been adorning Sunday roasts and hearty pub meals for centuries, bringing seemingly global attention to the proud nation of Yorkshire for the fried batter that bears its name. Despite being quintessentially Yorkshire, the appeal of that fateful pudding seemingly defies national borders. During the mid-20th century, for instance, the Yorkshire pudding found itself worshipped in the rural backwaters of Tennessee by a young Dolly Parton.
Exactly how the country music icon became acquainted with the legendary pudding remains a source of mystery – as does her chosen accompaniment to said pudding, given that we all know that American gravy is a travesty. However, her unlikely adoration of the Yorkshire pudding has seemingly followed her throughout her life.
“We always used to love that when we were traveling around the world,” Parton once told CMT. “Especially in England, we’d always say ‘We gotta get some Yorkshire pudding’.” Such is the extent of her love for the foodstuff, in fact, that in 2024 she included an apparently ‘foolproof’ recipe on how to make Yorkshire puddings in her cookbook, Good Lookin’ Cookin’, created alongside her younger sister, Rachel Parton George.
That particular cookbook has a particularly autobiographical quality to it, with each recipe carefully chosen to represent a moment or memory from the shared history of the sisters. Seemingly, it was Rachel who took the lead role vis-à-vis Yorkshire puddings, with Parton telling Better Homes and Gardens, “For our Yorkshire pudding recipe, she was going to get that right. She thought about it before she even started it.”
By the sounds of it, then, both of the Parton sisters are well-aware of the vital importance of Yorkshire puddings and credit them with the respect they so richly deserve. They would never, for instance, stoop as low as referring to them as ‘popovers’, as many American cooks seem determined to do.
As for Parton’s Yorkshire pudding recipe itself, we do not wish to discourage any potential readers from exploring that country-fueled cookbook by sharing it outright here. It must be said, though, that there are only ever a few differences between Yorkshire pudding recipes, given that they are essentially just water, egg, and flour mixed together and then cooked in hot oil or beef dripping – there’s really not much of a ‘twist’ you can put on them, save from splashing some beer in the batter or switching out the size of your muffin tins.
Nevertheless, Dolly Parton’s love for Yorkshire puddings appears to be rather long-standing, despite the fact that she has only performed in the county on a handful of occasions. Back in 2007, for instance, she visited Rotherham to launch her Imagination Library in the UK, but her last visit to God’s Own Country was way back in 2014, when she played Leeds Arena.
In the intervening years, then, it seems that the country star found herself missing that egg batter delicacy, and so attempted to recreate it herself.
