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A Yorkshire Pudding

A Yorkshire pudding is a savory batter cooked in dripping or cooking fat over a fire.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix milk, eggs, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add flour to create a thick batter, similar to pancake batter.

Bake

  1. Heat a stewpan with some dripping on the fire until it boils.

  2. Pour the batter into the boiling dripping.

  3. Bake on the fire until nearly done.

  4. Place an upside-down plate in the dripping pan.

  5. Set the stewpan on the plate under the meat to catch the dripping.

  6. Allow the heat from the fire to brown the pudding.

  7. Once the meat is done, drain excess fat from the pudding.

  8. Place the pudding back on the fire to dry slightly.

Serve

  1. Slide the pudding onto a dish.

  2. Melt some butter and pour it into the center.

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. 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

Eggs
Provide structure and help the batter set and rise as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the thick batter structure that sets around the hot fat as the pudding bakes.
Milk
Supplies liquid that turns to steam in the oven, helping the pudding rise.
Dripping
Heated fat that sears the batter's base, producing crisp browning and lift.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the boiling dripping. The fat must be very hot before the batter goes in. The batter hitting smoking hot fat sets its outside quickly and creates the lift and crisp edges, while cold fat would make 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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