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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter made from flour, milk, eggs, and salt, cooked in beef drippings or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Yorkshire Pudding

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 ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, milk, eggs, and salt until smooth.

  3. Pour beef drippings or oil into a baking dish and place it in the oven to heat.

Bake and serve

  1. Once hot, pour the batter into the dish and bake for 20-25 minutes until puffed and golden.

  2. Serve immediately as an accompaniment to roast beef.

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. 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. Milk + eggtop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that the batter sets around as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and lift, helping the batter puff up in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth batter that bakes into a tender interior.
Beef drippings or oil
Heated fat that sears the batter edges, promoting rise and golden browning.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until very hot before adding the batter. The batter must hit a very hot fat so its outer edges set quickly and steam lifts the centre. A cool dish gives a flat, greasy 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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