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Bread

Sally Lunn

A yeasted potato bread with eggs and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sally Lunn

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Boil and mash the potato until smooth.

  2. Mix the mashed potato with salt, sugar, walnut-sized butter, and yeast.

  3. Let the mixture rise in a warm place over hot water.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light and stir in the flour and risen sponge.

  2. Add enough boiled and cooled milk to achieve a cake-like consistency.

  3. Let the batter rise in a warm place for 8 to 9 hours.

  4. Beat the batter again and pour it into a buttered mold.

  5. Let it rise for another 2 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve hot with butter.

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

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

  3. Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and holds the risen crumb.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and lift as they are beaten into the batter.
Potato yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the bread rise.
Potato
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb and feeds the yeast with starch.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and contributes flavour.
Milk
Adds liquid to reach a cake-like batter that can hold its rise.

The step that matters

Add the milk only after it has boiled and cooled. Yeast is killed by heat, so milk must be cool before it meets the sponge. Warm, not hot, conditions let the yeast work steadily and produce a light rise.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, sugar, butter, walnut, milk):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, butter, walnut, milk. 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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