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Toad-in-the-hole

A baked dish of beef pieces in a batter, cooked in a Yorkshire pudding tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk 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 ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the flour, milk, egg, and a little salt into a smooth batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Melt enough dripping in a Yorkshire pudding tin to form a thin layer.

  2. Pour in about one-third of the batter and bake until set.

  3. Season the beef steak with salt and pepper, then add it to the tin.

  4. Pour in the remaining batter and bake quickly until it has risen and set.

  5. Reduce the heat and cook slowly until fully cooked.

  6. Cut into squares and serve hot.

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 + milktop 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. Beef + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that sets and rises around the beef.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps the batter rise and brown in the hot tin.
Beef steak
Provides the main savoury filling cooked within the batter.

The step that matters

Pour the remaining batter and bake quickly. The tin must be very hot and the fat smoking before batter goes in, so the batter sets and puffs at once rather than becoming dense or greasy.

“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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