Name: Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet milk; 4 eggs, well beaten; 2 scant cups flour; 1 teaspoon salt

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

Ingredients

1 pint sweet milk
4 eggs, well beaten
2 scant cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

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.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix the milk, beaten eggs, flour, and salt until smooth.
About 1 hour before the roast is done, pour off excess fat from the baking pan, leaving just enough to prevent sticking.
Pour the batter into the pan.
Place an oven grate over the baking pan and set the roast on it, allowing drippings to fall onto the batter.
Baste the roast frequently with hot fat from the pan.

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.

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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes

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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding