Skip to main content
Main

Toad in the Hole

A British dish of meat baked in a batter of flour, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Toad in the Hole

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 batter

  1. In a bowl, combine 5 oz of flour and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Break 1 egg into the flour and gradually stir in 1 pint of milk until smooth. Beat the mixture well to make the batter lighter.

Prepare the dish

  1. Cut 2 lbs of meat into neat pieces.

  2. Grease a pie dish or tin with clarified dripping. Season the meat pieces with pepper and salt, then place them in the greased dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter over the meat and bake in a 400 °F (200 °C) oven for 1 hour. Serve once baked.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Forms the batter's structure, setting around the meat as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it rise and set as it bakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Meat (beef or mutton)
Forms the main filling, releasing juices and fat that flavour the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the batter well. Beating incorporates air into the thin batter and develops the gluten in the flour, helping the batter puff and set lighter rather than dense.

“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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes