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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of milk, eggs, flour, and salt cooked in beef dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Yorkshire Pudding

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

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Mix the milk, flour, and salt into a smooth batter.

Roast with the beef

  1. Pour off excess fat from the gravy in the dripping pan, leaving just enough to prevent sticking.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan and roast alongside the beef, allowing the dripping to fall onto the pudding.

  3. Baste the meat with the reserved gravy.

Serve

  1. Cut the pudding into squares and serve around the meat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air and set during baking, giving the pudding its light, puffed structure.
Flour
Starch and gluten set as the batter bakes, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns to steam in the hot oven, helping the pudding rise and stay moist.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter into the hot fat. A thin layer of hot fat sears the base as the batter goes in, which helps it rise and keeps it from sticking. Too much fat can make the bottom greasy; too little lets it stick.

“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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