Name: A Yorkshire Pudding to Bake Tinder Meat
Ingredients: 3 or 4 eggs; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 quart milk; flour (to make a stiff batter)

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 ↓

A Yorkshire Pudding to Bake Tinder Meat

Ingredients

3 or 4 eggs
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 quart milk
flour (to make a stiff batter)

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

Beat the eggs with salt and milk.
Add flour to create a stiff batter.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into a dripping pan.
Bake under mutton, beef, or veal at 400°F (200°C).
Before serving, place a chafing dish with coals underneath to brown and lighten the pudding.
Cut into squares and serve.

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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + milktop 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

Eggs: Provide structure and help the batter puff and set as it bakes.
Milk: Supplies liquid whose steam expands in the hot oven, lifting the batter and keeping it tender.
Flour: Forms the gluten-based framework that holds the risen batter in shape as it sets.

The step that matters

Bake under mutton, beef, or veal at 400°F (200°C).. The batter needs strong oven heat so steam expands quickly and the outside sets before it collapses. If the heat is too low or baking is cut short, the pudding stays flat, dense and soggy in the middle.

“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.