Skip to main content
Main

Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of milk, eggs, flour, salt, baking powder, beef drippings, and raisins or currants.

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

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Yorkshire Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk and beaten eggs until smooth.

  2. Add salt, baking powder, and flour; mix until the consistency is like cream.

Bake

  1. Pour some drippings into 2 biscuit tins.

  2. Divide the pudding mixture between the tins.

  3. Sprinkle raisins or currants over each pan just before placing in the oven.

  4. Bake until golden and puffed.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and provide structure that helps the pudding rise and set.
Flour
Forms the gluten-based structure that holds the risen pudding together.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter become smooth and pourable.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the pudding puff up.
Drippings from beef roast
Fat heated in the tins that sears the batter edges and promotes browning and crisping.

The step that matters

Pour drippings and bake in a very hot oven. The fat must be smoking hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, producing the steam-driven rise and crisp walls that define a Yorkshire pudding. Cold or insufficiently heated fat gives a flat, dense result.

“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.

More yorkshire pudding recipes

with Roast Beef 8with Beef 3 See all 346 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes