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Dessert

Professor Braxton's Sally Lunn

A sweet, yeasted cake made with flour, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

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 ↓

Professor Braxton's Sally Lunn

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, break the eggs and mix well.

  3. Add melted butter, sugar, and baking powder to the eggs and mix until combined.

  4. Gradually add flour and enough milk to create a smooth batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into 1.5-inch cake pans.

  2. Bake until risen and light brown, about 20-25 minutes.

  3. Serve hot for breakfast.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen bread together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter rise and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the bread rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Moistens the flour so the batter forms a smooth, pourable mix.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour and enough milk to create a smooth batter.. Adding flour and milk gradually helps prevent lumps and keeps the batter smooth. Mixing too hard after adding flour can develop gluten and make the bread tougher.

“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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