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Dessert

Brighton Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with flour, baking powder, margarine, sugar, egg, milk, and topped with jam.

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

Brighton Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the baking powder with the flour.

  2. Rub in the margarine, then add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the egg and milk, and beat thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased dish.

  2. Bake until golden, then turn out and spread jam over the top.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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 that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Margarine
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Beat thoroughly after adding the egg and milk. Beating works air into the batter and fully combines the wet and dry ingredients. Under-mixing can leave streaks of flour, while the baking powder then gives an uneven rise.

“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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