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Roast Beef with Batter Pudding

A roast beef served with a batter pudding made from eggs, milk, flour, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Roast Beef with Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Roast the beef

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

  2. Place the beef in a pan, lay the slice of suet on top, and dredge with flour.

  3. Roast for 10 minutes per pound for rare, lowering the oven heat after the first 30 minutes.

  4. Once done, remove the roast from the pan and keep warm on a platter.

Make the batter pudding

  1. For the batter pudding, beat the eggs and add the milk.

  2. Sift the flour with the salt and baking powder, then add to the egg mixture and beat thoroughly.

  3. Pour the batter into the hot dripping pan and bake for 20 minutes.

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. 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. Beef + flourtop 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

Rump beef
Forms the main meat, cooking to a tender interior as it roasts.
Suet
Adds fat that bastes the beef and enriches the drippings used for the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and give the pudding its structure as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the body that sets the batter into a light, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Thins the batter and adds moisture so it bakes tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter into the hot dripping pan. The pan must be very hot with drippings already in it so the batter sears on contact and starts to rise quickly. A cold pan makes the pudding heavy and greasy.

“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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