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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of flour, eggs, milk, salt, baking powder, and beef drippings.

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk.

  4. Stir the egg and milk mixture into the flour to create a thinner batter than for griddle cakes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a dripping pan generously coated with cold beef drippings.

  2. Bake for 25 minutes.

  3. Serve with 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. 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. 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).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as its starch and proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Add structure and help the batter rise and set into a custard-like crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that turns to steam, helping the pudding puff.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the pudding rise.
Beef drippings
Heats until smoking hot, searing the batter edges and encouraging rapid rising and browning.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into a very hot, well-greased pan. The batter must hit hot fat so its edges sear and start to set immediately. A cold pan or cold drippings lets the batter spread and sink instead of rising high.

“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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