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Bread

Sally Lunn

A yeast bread made with milk, water, butter, flour, eggs, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk and water mixture and melt the butter in it.

  2. Add enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Incorporate the eggs, yeast, and salt into the batter.

Rise and bake

  1. Set the batter in a warm place to rise.

  2. Bake for nearly 1 hour without beating the batter after adding the yeast.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Add richness and structure, helping the crumb set as it bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the bread its light texture.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff batter its structure.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and contributes to a tender texture.

The step that matters

Do not beat the batter after adding the yeast. Beating after the yeast is added knocks out the gas bubbles it has produced and toughens the gluten, so the risen batter loses its lightness and bakes up dense.

“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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