Name: Sally Lunn, No.1
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 2 ounces brown sugar; 2 eggs; 2 tablespoons yeast; ½ pint milk; caraway seed (optional); cinnamon (optional)

Why it works: Caraway and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 188 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sally Lunn, No.1

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.

Warm the milk, butter, and sugar together.
Mix the warm mixture with flour to form a soft dough.
Butter a pan and place the dough in it, allowing it to rise without working it over for 3 hours.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.
Serve hot, buttered when eaten.

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.

Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together188 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,784 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, cinnamon):

Nutmegfits better
Clovefits better
Allspicefits better
Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.