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Toad-in-the-hole

A British dish of meat baked in a batter of flour, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Toad-in-the-hole

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

  1. In a bowl, combine 6 ounces of flour and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Add 1 egg and gradually stir in 1 pint of milk until smooth.

  3. Beat the mixture well to make it lighter.

Prepare the dish

  1. Cut 1.5 pounds of meat into neat pieces.

  2. Grease a pie dish or tin with clarified dripping.

  3. Season the meat with pepper and salt, then place it in the greased dish.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter over the meat and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Forms the structure of the batter that puffs and sets around the meat.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it rise and set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour can form a smooth, pourable batter.
Meat (beef or mutton)
Forms the savoury centre and releases fat that flavours the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Beat the batter well before baking. Beating incorporates air and develops the batter's structure, which helps it rise and puff in the hot oven. Under-beaten batter tends to bake flat 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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