Skip to main content
Main

Sally Lunn

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine 3 pints of warm milk and yeast to create a sponge.

  2. Once the sponge is ready, add the remaining pint of milk, eggs, sugar, and salt.

  3. Stir in the melted butter and mix to form a slack, smooth dough.

  4. Let the dough rise once.

Shape and rise

  1. Work the dough over and divide it into half‑pound pieces.

  2. Shape each piece into a round.

  3. Place the rounds on pie or layer cake tins.

  4. Flatten the rounds on the tins.

  5. Allow the rounds to rise again.

  6. Brush the tops with melted butter.

  7. Cut each round into four pieces with a dough scraper.

Bake

  1. Let the pieces finish rising before baking in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the bread set with a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a soft, tender texture and rich flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Let the pieces finish rising before baking. Baking before the dough has fully risen traps less gas, so the loaves can be dense. Fully proofed dough expands well in a hot oven and gives a light, open crumb.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes