What is a Popovaire?
Vintage baking pans are pretty self explanatory. Their shapes make their purposes pretty evident. This piece of found vintage, a Popovaire pan made by United Aircraft Products Inc. (UAP) of Dayton, OH, also has an evident use, to make popovers. Popover pans differ from muffin pans; the indents are narrower in diameter and deeper. The mystery here is what on earth a company called United Aircraft Products was doing making baking pans.
A manufacturing mystery?
That means it’s time for a dive down the internet rabbit hole to see what we can see about the pan and its maker. This info is not needed to price or list this pan for sale. Nope, it’s just because some things you need to know.
United Aircraft Products was founded in Dayton, OH in 1929. The company still makes heat exchangers and still exists as a subsidiary of the Triumph Group of Wayne, PA. How they came to make baking pans I was not able to determine. However, I did find out who designed their baking pans.
A patent for the Popovaire pan and its siblings the Muffinaire and the Shellaire (think spongecake shells for strawberry shortcake) was filed by one Theodore M. Hiester in 1931. It was approved in 1933. Mr. Hiester had many other patents, including one from 1913 for a rotary fluid-motor. And per American Miller and Processor magazine, he filed a patent for a water motor in 1906.
It’s infuriating to not be able to get the answers you want. UAP was a busy company. Over the years UAP filed a number of trademarks, including the Aerofuse automatic cut off value for hydraulic fuel lines (1945), the Mor-Seal, a fluorocarbon dispersion for use in a spray package for sealants and lubricants (1963) and Fire Safe Flange Seals (1982). How can a company that did so much leave behind no digital record about the founder or the employees or who might have decided that making baking pans was a good sideline?
A baking we will go…
I may not have been able to fully satisfy my rabbit hole urge to know everything about the Popovaire, but it did make me think good thoughts of popovers; lovely light, fluffy, eggy popovers. I remember a trip with my parents to Patricia Murphy’s Candlelight restaurant in Yonkers, near NYC, specifically to have their famous popovers. Our family laments the closing of Judie’s in Amherst, MA, longing for their huge popovers (recipe here). If’ you’re not lucky enough to live near somewhere that makes popovers, try Ina Garten’s recipe. You won’t regret it.
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5 comments
I have a United Aircraft Products Inc. Dayton Ohio. Popovaire,12 count pan. Patent 1921256. I made Banana Nut muffins in it today. Is the pan worth anything?
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I have a Muffinaire that I just used to bake veggie egg ‘muffins’. It was my Mom’s and possibly my grandmother’s pan. I, too am curious as to how UAP got into making bakeware. Any idea when they made these products?
Hi Suzanne, how cool to be the third generation using a pan! We think they made Muffinaire pans in the 1920s. Bake on!
I think baking tins, watering cans and other goods were made of the same materials with similar tools and processes.
And I think after the world wars, airplane demand went down, so the manufacturers had to diversify to others products to keep making sales.
It’s 1:00 in the morning and I found your post after spending an hour trying to figure out the same thing- why the Muffinaire 6-spot cupcake pan I just bought for $1 has an aviation background….which I do, also.
I’m glad I’m not the only weirdo out here…. haa