A tale of two batters

It was the best of times - no worst involved - when I recently happened to make crepes and popovers on the same day.  And though the finished products are as different as the opposing superlatives in the opening sentence of Mr. Dickens' book, I noticed something peculiar: the batters were nearly identical.

The ingredients for my crepe batter were:
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon oil

Whereas, the popover ingredients were:
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon melted butter

How then - besides the one egg difference - do we end up with two such completely different products?  The crepe is paper (or at least cardboard) thin, while the popover is a testament to the incredible lifting power of eggs, literally popping far over the boundaries of the muffin tin in which it is cooked.

The obvious answer is the cooking method: the popovers cooked in a hot oven for almost 40 minutes, while the crepes spend maybe two total minutes in a frying pan.

But I think it's a result of how the ingredients are combined, too.  Popovers are mixed together in a fairly standard order: dry ingredients whisked together, egg and milk combined, wet ingredients mixed into dry, and then the melted butter stirred in last of all.  The batter then rests for at least half an hour before being poured into a hot muffin tin, and then into the oven.

Crepes, on the other hand, are a little more unorthodox.  I tried a number of ways of mixing ingredients for crepes together before I found one that I liked; standard wet-into-dry mixing always seemed to lead to thin, chewy, unrisen pancake-like creations.  Instead, I sift together the dry ingredients, then create a well in the middle of them, into which goes the eggs.  The flour is slowly beaten into the eggs until fully incorporated, and then the milk is added slowly, whisking constantly, until a smooth, lumpless batter is achieved.  As with popovers, the oil is added last, and then the batter gets a nice long rest before heading into the frying pan a few tablespoons at a time.

Even more intriguing to me is the fact that crepes come from Brittany, the rugged, Northeasternmost région of France, home to a proud, Celtic heritage.  Did the Celts import their batter from Yorkshire (where popovers are made with meat drippings instead of butter and called "Yorkshire pudding"), but not bring the pans to cook them in and have to work something with flat frying pans instead?  Or is it just pure coincidence?

Somehow, eggs never fail to inspire both an epoch of incredulity and of belief in me: incredulity that they can result in such completely opposite dishes, yet belief in their abilities to continually wow me.  Especially mixed into a batter with flour and milk, cooked or baked, and spread with a generous glop of jam, and maybe a dollop of Greek yogurt.