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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

A roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding made from flour, milk, eggs, and roast drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Roast Beef with 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 roast

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

  2. Season the roast beef with salt and pepper, then place it in a baking pan with 1 cup of water.

  3. Roast for 15 minutes per pound, basting often.

Make the batter

  1. For Yorkshire pudding, sift 1 pint of flour into a large bowl.

  2. Add ⅔ pint of milk, ½ teaspoon of salt, and 4 eggs. Mix and beat thoroughly.

  3. Add the remaining milk and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour some drippings from the roast into a 12x8 inch pan and heat it in the oven.

  2. Once hot, pour in the batter to a depth of 1 inch.

  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.

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, which sets into the puffed walls of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it rise and set as the steam expands during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it can puff and brown in the hot fat.
Drippings from the roast
Provide hot fat that sears the batter's base, helping it rise quickly and brown.

The step that matters

Heating the drippings until very hot before adding the batter. The batter must hit smoking-hot fat so its surface sets instantly and steam pushes it upward. Cold fat gives a dense, flat pudding.

“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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