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Yorkshire Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 wordsThe hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “the hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk, beaten egg yolks, salt, baking powder, and flour until smooth, resembling the consistency of cream.

  3. Prepare two biscuit tins by adding drippings from the roast beef.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour half of the pudding mixture into each tin.

  2. Place the tins in the hot oven and bake until the roast is ready, about 30 to 40 minutes.

  3. Remove the puddings from the oven just before serving and serve hot.

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. Milk + eggtop 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
Egg yolks add richness and the whites, when beaten, help the batter rise and set light.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter into a sturdy, hollow structure.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that turns to steam in the hot oven, helping the pudding puff.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise in the oven.
Drippings from roast beef
Hot fat in the tins gives the pudding crisp, browned edges and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the drippings until very hot before pouring in the batter. The batter must hit hot fat so it starts cooking and rising immediately. Cold or insufficiently hot fat makes the pudding dense and flat instead of tall and crisp.

“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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