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Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter made with flour, milk, eggs, salt, and roast beef drippings.

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, ½ cup of milk, salt, and eggs. Beat until well blended.

  2. Add the remaining milk and mix thoroughly.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Pour some drippings from the roasting beef into a 12x8x1 inch baking pan and heat it in the oven.

  2. Once the pan is hot, pour the batter over the drippings.

  3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until golden.

  4. Cut into square pieces and serve around the roast beef.

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. Milk + eggtop 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 that lets the batter rise and set into a crisp-edged pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and provide the lift that makes the pudding puff as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter steam and expand in the hot pan.
Drippings from roast beef
Hot fat that sears the batter's base, promoting browning and crisp edges.

The step that matters

Heat the drippings until very hot before adding the batter. The batter must hit a very hot, fatted pan so it sizzles on contact. This starts the rise quickly and crisps the base; a cool pan gives a flat, greasy 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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