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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

A roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding made from a batter of flour, milk, eggs, and drippings.

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.

Roast the beef

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

  2. Place the beef roast on a rack over a dripping pan.

  3. Roast the beef for about 1 hour.

Make and bake the Yorkshire pudding

  1. About 30 minutes before the beef is done, pour off excess drippings, leaving enough to prevent sticking.

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, milk, salt, and eggs, and beat well.

  3. Pour the batter into the dripping pan or a pie tin with a little drippings.

  4. Replace the rack with the beef and bake for 30 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

Beef roast
Forms the main meat, which browns and renders fat as it roasts.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen batter together.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that turns to steam and helps the pudding rise.
Eggs
Set during baking and add structure and lift to the batter.
Beef drippings
Adds fat that sears the batter's base and prevents sticking in the pan.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter into hot drippings. The fat must be very hot when the batter goes in. The batter's surface sears on contact, which helps it rise evenly. Cooler fat lets the batter soak in and bake flat 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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