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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of flour, eggs, milk, and butter, served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Yorkshire Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Yorkshire Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix with enough milk to achieve a soft custard consistency.

  3. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Melt the butter in a dripping pan until slightly browned.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan and place in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Pour the melted butter over the top.

  4. Brown another tablespoon of butter and baste the pudding with it when almost done.

Serve

  1. Cut into squares and serve with melted butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that sets the batter as the pudding bakes.
Eggs
Whipped whites lift the batter, and the yolks enrich it and help it set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs into a pourable batter and adds moisture.
Butter
Fat in the hot pan browns the pudding's base and crisps its edges.

The step that matters

Preheating the pan with fat until very hot before pouring in the batter. The batter must hit a smoking hot, greased pan so steam and heat force it to rise quickly. A cool pan lets the batter spread and sink instead of puffing into tall, crisp walls.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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