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Bread

Old Fashioned Sally Lunn

A yeast‑leavened, milk‑based bread with butter, eggs, sugar, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Old Fashioned Sally Lunn

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan until it reaches boiling point, then remove from heat.

  2. Add the butter to the hot milk and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the lukewarm milk.

  4. Stir in the sugar, salt, and dissolved yeast (mix the yeast with warm water first).

  5. Sift the flour into a large bowl and pour the milk mixture into the center.

  6. Mix everything together until smooth, then beat for 5 minutes.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise until doubled in size.

  2. Beat the dough again, then pour it into a baking pan.

  3. Let it rise again until it doubles in bulk.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  5. If it starts to brown too much, cover it with paper for the last 15 minutes.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Provides liquid and moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the crumb set and bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during fermentation, making the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to lighten the dough; rising too little leaves a dense crumb, while the second rise sets the final texture.

“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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