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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of flour, milk, eggs, salt, and beef fat, served around meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

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, mix the flour with the cold water and milk until smooth.

  2. Add salt and beat in the egg yolks.

  3. Just before baking, fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. In a square baking pan, add the beef fat and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until set.

  3. Baste with hot drippings every few minutes until golden brown.

  4. Cut 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 + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 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).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whipped whites give the batter structure and lift as it bakes.
Prepared flour
Flour forms the batter's structure, setting around the steam to hold its shape.
Milk
Milk adds moisture and helps the batter brown in the hot oven.
Beef fat
Hot fat in the pan starts the batter cooking quickly, helping it rise and crisp.

The step that matters

Preheat the fat until very hot before pouring in the batter. The batter must hit a very hot fat so steam forms quickly and the pudding rises high. A cool pan gives a flat, dense result.

“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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