Skip to main content
Dessert

Brighton Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, and leavening agents, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Brighton Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Mix the sugar and butter together until well combined.

  2. Add the eggs gradually, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the sugar and butter mixture.

  4. If using ammonia, pound it and mix it in with the butter, sugar, and eggs before adding the milk.

  5. Add the flour last, mixing until just combined.

  6. If using cream of tartar, mix it with the flour before adding.

  7. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor, and holds air from creaming.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure as its starch sets in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and dissolves the baking soda so it spreads evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts with an acid to release carbon dioxide, which lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour in last, just until combined. Once flour is added, its proteins form gluten the more it is mixed. Overmixing makes the cake tough and dense, so stop as soon as no dry flour remains.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes