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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of eggs, milk, flour, and salt, served with roast beef and gravy.

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. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add salt and milk, then pour ½ cup of this mixture over the flour and stir to a smooth paste.

  3. Add the remaining mixture and beat well.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease gem pans with beef drippings and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  3. Baste with beef drippings and serve on a platter surrounding the roast beef with beef gravy.

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. 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. Flour + beeftop 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
Provide structure and lift, setting the batter as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Supplies liquid that turns to steam in the hot pan, helping the pudding rise.
Beef drippings
Hot fat that fries the batter edges, promoting browning and crisp sides.

The step that matters

Preheat the fat until smoking hot before pouring in the batter. The batter must hit very hot fat so it sizzles and starts rising immediately. Cold or lukewarm fat slows the rise, leaving a dense, flat 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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