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Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

A roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, parsnips, and cranberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsnip work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 353 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. 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

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

  2. Cook the tapioca in a cup of water until soft.

  3. Heat fat in a pan for the beef.

Roast

  1. Place the cranberries and Yorkshire pudding in the oven on the bottom shelf.

  2. Add the potatoes on the bottom shelf with a tin underneath to prevent burning.

  3. At 11:30, place the beef on the bottom shelf and Yorkshire pudding in patty pans above.

  4. Turn the potatoes and place parsnips with a little water on the lower shelf.

  5. Heat stock on the upper shelf.

  6. After 45 minutes, turn the meat, remove cranberries, and place parsnips on the upper shelf.

  7. Finish cooking until everything is ready by 1 o'clock.

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. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main protein; slow roasting in fat browns the outside and keeps the inside tender.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that sets into the rising Yorkshire pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it puff and set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it brown and rise.
Potatoes
Starch that softens and browns in the oven, giving a sturdy side dish.

The step that matters

Heat the fat before the batter goes in. Batter poured into very hot fat sets quickly on contact, which helps it rise high and crisp. Cold fat lets the batter spread and stay flat and dense.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, flour, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, flour, milk, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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