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Sally Lunn

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

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

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

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

  4. Let the dough rise once, then knead it gently.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into ½ pound pieces and shape them into rounds.

  2. Place the rounds on pie or layer cake tins and flatten them slightly.

  3. Allow the dough to rise again, then brush with melted butter.

  4. Using a dough scraper, cut each round into four pieces.

  5. Let them finish rising before baking in a preheated 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
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that gives a tender crumb and a rich flavour.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning.

The step that matters

Let the pieces finish rising before baking. Yeast gas expands the dough during the final rise. If the rounds are underproofed, the loaves stay dense; if overproofed, the gas structure weakens and they can collapse in the oven.

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.

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