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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

A batter of flour, milk, salt, and eggs baked in beef drippings over roast beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Roast Beef with 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 the beef

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the beef on a rack over a dripping pan.

  3. About 45 minutes before the beef is done, pour off the drippings, leaving enough to prevent sticking.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, milk, salt, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Pour the batter into the dripping pan or a pie tin with some drippings.

  3. Replace the rack with the beef and bake for 45 minutes.

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. 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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes and rises.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it puff up as steam expands during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, helping it steam and rise in the hot oven.
Beef drippings
Hot fat in the pan lets the batter sear and rise quickly, adding browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the drippings before the batter goes in. The pan and fat must be very hot when the batter is poured. The batter hits the hot fat and starts cooking at once, creating steam that lifts the pudding. A cold pan or cool fat gives a flat, dense 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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