Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓
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.
Make the batter
Mix the flour with the milk and add a little coarse sea salt.
Pour the mixture into a shallow tin.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.
Place it under the roasting beef and leave it until the beef is done.
After removing the beef, let it sit for about 5 minutes.
Pour off the fat and serve.
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.
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk 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
- Flour
- Its proteins form a network that gives the baked batter its structure and lets it set.
- Milk
- Its water turns to steam in the hot oven, helping the pudding rise and giving a tender, browned crust.
The step that matters
Bake in a hot oven. The batter needs a very hot oven so its liquid turns to steam quickly while the outside sets. This rapid expansion makes the pudding rise. A cool oven 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.
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