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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter made with flour, milk, eggs, and dripping, cooked in a hot oven until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Yorkshire Pudding

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 ↓

Yorkshire Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and eggs.

  2. Gradually add the milk while mixing well to create a batter.

Bake

  1. Grease a baking tin and add the dripping from the meat.

  2. Place the tin in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until the dripping is thoroughly hot.

  3. Pour the batter mixture into the hot tin.

  4. Bake for about 15 minutes until puffed and golden.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 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).

  4. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 holds the batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it rise and set into a crisp, airy shell.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and thins the batter so it can expand in the hot fat.
Dripping
Heats until smoking and sears the batter on contact, driving the rise and browning.

The step that matters

Heat the dripping until very hot before adding the batter. The batter must hit a very hot, fat-coated tin so its surface sets quickly and steam pushes it upward. Pouring into a cool tin leads to a flat, greasy result.

“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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