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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of milk, egg, flour, salt, and baking powder cooked in roast drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Yorkshire Pudding

Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Yorkshire 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg white and yolk separately.

  2. Mix the milk, egg yolk, salt, baking powder, and flour until smooth, like cream.

Bake

  1. Twenty minutes before the roast is ready, pour drippings from the roast into a biscuit tin.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the tin and place it in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pudding its structure as it sets.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the pudding set and puff as it bakes.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that turns the flour into a pourable batter and adds moisture.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and become light.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter into hot drippings in a hot oven. The batter must go into very hot fat in a hot oven. The sudden heat turns the moisture in the batter to steam and sets the outer edges quickly, which helps the pudding rise high. If the fat or oven is not hot enough, the batter spreads and bakes flat and dense.

“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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