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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

A roast beef served with a baked Yorkshire pudding made from milk, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk 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 ↓

Roast Beef with 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 your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk or water, egg yolks, flour, and salt.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Roast and bake

  1. Place the beef on a grating in a dripping pan.

  2. Roast the beef until nearly done, about 30 minutes before serving.

  3. Pour the pudding batter into the pan under the grating with the beef.

  4. Continue roasting until the beef and pudding are done.

  5. Cut the pudding into pieces and serve with the 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.

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. Beef + milktop 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. Beef + flourtop 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

Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they trap air and lift the batter so the pudding rises and stays light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter, giving a tender, custardy interior.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so the pudding sets firm around its risen walls.
Milk or water
Provides the liquid that turns the batter into a pourable mix that steams and rises in the hot oven.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiff egg whites gently. Stiff egg whites hold the air that makes the pudding rise. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, so the pudding comes out 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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