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Good Yorkshire Pudding

A baked batter of eggs, flour, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Good 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, whisk the eggs until well combined.

  3. Strain the eggs and gradually mix them with the flour.

  4. Slowly pour in the milk until the batter reaches a thin cream consistency.

  5. Place a baking tin in the oven to heat.

  6. Beat the batter briskly just before pouring it into the hot tin.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until the pudding is firm and well-colored on the surface.

  2. To brown the underside, divide the pudding into quarters and turn it carefully.

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. Egg + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the batter as the pudding bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pudding its body and rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture, so the batter steams and puffs in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the batter briskly just before pouring it into the hot tin. Beating develops gluten and traps air, which helps the pudding rise. The tin must be very hot so the batter sizzles on contact and starts to puff immediately; a cold tin or a batter that sits too long loses its lift.

“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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