Name: Yorkshire Pudding
Ingredients: 1½ pints milk; 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour; 3 large eggs; ¼ 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 ↓

Yorkshire Pudding

Ingredients

1½ pints milk
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 large eggs
¼ 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.

Make the batter

Mix the milk, flour, eggs, and salt until smooth.
Pour the mixture into a shallow baking pan.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.
Place the pan under the roasting beef for 1 hour 30 minutes.
Remove the pudding 5 minutes after taking the beef out.
Pour off any excess fat before serving.

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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour: Forms the batter's structure, which sets as the pudding bakes.
Eggs: Add structure and help the pudding rise as it bakes.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps form a tender, custard-like batter.

“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.