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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

A roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding made from milk, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Roast Beef with 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 and roast the beef

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the beef on a grating or on sticks in a dripping pan.

  3. Roast the beef for 15 minutes per pound for rare.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. Mix the pudding ingredients: milk, beaten egg whites, beaten egg yolks, flour, and salt.

  2. Pour the pudding batter into the pan 45 minutes before the beef is done.

  3. Continue roasting the beef, allowing the drippings to fall onto the pudding.

Serve

  1. When both are done, cut the pudding into squares and serve around the meat.

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.

  1. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat, and its drippings fall onto the pudding as it bakes.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air for lift, while the yolks add richness and help set the structure.
Flour
Provides starch and gluten that give the batter body and hold its shape as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that turns the batter into a thin, pourable mix.

The step that matters

Pour the pudding batter 45 minutes before the beef is done. The batter needs the very hot fat and drippings in the pan to rise quickly and set. Pouring it too early lets it sit and deflate, while pouring it too late leaves it underbaked and dense.

“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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