Skip to main content
Main

Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter made with eggs, milk, flour, salt, and roast beef drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓
Yorkshire Pudding

Why it works: Milk and beef 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 ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add salt and milk, stirring gradually into the flour until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into hot oven pans with drippings from the roast beef.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting twice with beef drippings after 15 minutes.

  3. Serve around the roast beef.

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

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

  5. Flour + beeftop 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and set during baking, giving the pudding its structure and lift.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the pudding's main structure.
Milk
Provides moisture and thins the batter so it can rise and steam in the oven.
Beef drippings
Hot fat gives browning, savoury flavour, and helps the batter puff and crisp at the edges.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot drippings. The batter must hit very hot fat so it sizzles and starts setting immediately. Cool fat or a cool pan lets the batter spread and sink instead of rising into tall, crisp sides.

“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

You might also like