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Bread

Sally Lunn

A sweet yeast bread made with milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in ½ cup warm water.

  3. Pour the milk over the butter and salt.

  4. When lukewarm, add the yeast and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  5. Let the batter rise until light.

  6. Beat the eggs well and whip them into the batter.

Shape and bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered gem pans.

  2. Let rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and richness, helping the bread set with a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the batter enough structure to hold its risen shape.
Yeast cake
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the bread rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer crumb and richer flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that help browning and give a softer texture.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until light. The first rise develops the gas and gluten structure that make the bread light. Under-proofing leaves a dense crumb, while over-proofing can collapse the batter and weaken its structure.

“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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