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To Make Toad in a Hole

A baked dish of beef covered in Yorkshire pudding batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Make Toad in a Hole

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare a batter for Yorkshire pudding by mixing flour, milk, and eggs.

  2. Grease a baking dish and place a seasoned round piece of beef in the center.

  3. Pour enough batter over the beef to cover it.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. If using cold meat in slices, reduce baking time.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Forms the centre of the dish and gives the savoury meat flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, which sets as the pudding bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it rise and set as it bakes.
Milk
Makes the batter pourable and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Dripping
Fat heated in the dish helps the batter puff and brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the beef into a hot, greased dish. Batter needs a hot, fat-coated dish to start sizzling when it hits the pan, which helps it puff and brown rather than sink. Adding the batter to a cool dish gives a dense, flat 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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