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Baked Beef, and Yorkshire Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Baked Beef, and 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 beef

  1. Rub salt on the beef and place it on bars in a dripping pan.

  2. Add ½ cup of water to the pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the batter

  1. When the beef is half done, beat the egg yolks in a pan and the whites in a separate dish until stiff.

  2. Stir the milk into the thickened yolks, then gradually add enough flour to make a thin batter.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and add 1 teaspoon of dissolved carbonate of ammonia.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove the beef, skim the fat from the gravy, pour in the batter, and return the beef to the oven.

  2. Bake until the pudding is done, then cut it into squares and serve around the beef, brown side up.

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. Egg + milktop 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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air and help the pudding rise and set into a light structure.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, which sets as the pudding bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the batter bake tender and browned.
Carbonate of ammonia
Releases gas during baking, helping the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring vigorously would deflate the batter and leave a dense pudding.

“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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