Name: Sally Lunn Without Yeast
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 2 pints (8 cups) all-purpose flour; 1 egg-sized lump of butter (about 2 tablespoons); 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; Sweet milk (to make a batter, about 1 to 1½ cups); Alternatively, use 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder instead of cream of tartar and baking soda

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 Without Yeast

Ingredients

3 eggs
2 pints (8 cups) all-purpose flour
1 egg-sized lump of butter (about 2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
Sweet milk (to make a batter, about 1 to 1½ cups)
Alternatively, use 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder instead of cream of tartar and baking soda

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.

Prepare

Beat the eggs separately until fluffy.
In a bowl, combine the flour, butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Add sweet milk gradually to form a batter.
If using Royal Baking Powder, mix it with the dry ingredients.

Bake

Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs: Beaten until fluffy, they trap air that helps the cake rise and become light.
All-purpose flour: Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter: Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Cream of tartar: Supplies acid that reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise.
Sweet milk: Moistens the flour to form a batter and hydrates the starches for structure.

The step that matters

Bake soon after adding the milk. Baking soda and cream of tartar start reacting as soon as they are wet. Gas bubbles form quickly, so delaying the bake lets much of the rising power escape before the heat sets the batter.

“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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Sally Lunn Without Yeast