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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter made with flour, salt, baking powder, eggs, milk, and beef dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Yorkshire Pudding

Why it works: Milk and beef 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 ↓

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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and Magic Baking Powder.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until smooth.

Bake

  1. Heat the beef dripping in a pan until boiling hot.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot dripping 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  5. Flour + beeftop 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
Forms the structure of the batter that puffs and sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it rise and set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter turn into a loose, pourable mixture.
Magic baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise.
Beef dripping
Heated fat that sears the batter edges, helping them rise and brown.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot dripping. The fat must be boiling hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat starts cooking the batter on contact, which lets the pudding rise quickly and form crisp sides instead of sinking or steaming.

“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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