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Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding

A roast beef joint cooked in the oven with a batter of eggs, milk, flour and salt baked as Yorkshire pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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

  1. Prepare the roast for roasting as usual.

  2. Make the Yorkshire pudding batter 30 minutes before the roast is done.

  3. Butter a pan similar to the one used for the roast.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until light, then add salt and milk.

  2. Pour about ¼ cup of the milk mixture into the flour and mix until smooth, then add the rest.

Roast and bake

  1. Place a rack in the buttered pan, put the roast on the rack, and return to the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. If using one pan, remove the roast, pour off the gravy, and pour in the pudding batter.

  3. Bake the pudding for 30 minutes, then serve hot with the roast.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Beaten eggs give the batter structure and help it rise and set in the oven.
Flour
Flour forms the main structure that holds the pudding's shape as it bakes.
Milk
Milk adds moisture and liquid that turns the flour and eggs into a pourable batter that steams and puffs.

The step that matters

Timing the batter. The batter is made 30 minutes before the roast is done so it is ready to pour in when the roast comes out. Batter that waits too long can lose its airiness, so the pudding goes into the oven promptly to bake and rise.

“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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