Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Skim 6 tablespoons of fat from the gravy and place it in a smaller dripping pan or pudding dish in the oven.
Sift 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking powder with 1 pint of flour twice.
Beat 2 eggs until light, then add 2 cups of milk.
Quickly mix in the sifted flour.
Bake and serve
When the fat begins to bubble, pour in the batter and cook until golden brown.
Cut into squares and garnish the meat with the pudding when serving.
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.
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Provides the structure that sets the batter into a crisp-edged, hollow pudding.
- Eggs
- Add structure and help the batter rise and set as it bakes.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and helps form a thin batter that steams and puffs in the hot fat.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas that helps the pudding rise.
- Fat from gravy
- Heats until sizzling, searing the batter so it puffs and browns at the edges.
The step that matters
Pouring the batter into hot fat. The fat must be bubbling hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat seals the batter's surface immediately, so it puffs and crisps rather than soaking in and turning greasy or flat.
“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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