Name: Virginia Sally Lunn
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt; ½ yeast cake; 2 tablespoons Snowdrift (or shortening); 2 cups tepid water; 2 tablespoons sugar; Butter the size of an egg; Well beaten eggs (quantity not specified)

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Virginia 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.

Mix salt and Snowdrift in sifted flour.
Dissolve yeast cake in tepid water with 2 tablespoons sugar.
Mix thoroughly, adding yeast mixture to make a soft dough.
Let the dough rise for 4 to 5 hours.
Add the well beaten eggs and butter, and work well with your hands.
Place in a greased tube cake pan and let rise until doubled in bulk.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 35 to 40 minutes.
Finish baking with one burner turned halfway off for 25 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.

Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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