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Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet, yeasted bread-like cake made with eggs, sugar, milk, butter, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Sally Lunn

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the cream of tartar with the flour.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk mixture and melted butter to the egg mixture, then stir in the flour mixture until just combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the crumb as they cook and helping the bread rise.
Flour
Forms the structure of the crumb once its gluten and starch set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the bread and helps it brown while beating adds air to the eggs.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its proteins help the crust brown.
Butter
Adds fat for softer texture and richness in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture in until just combined. Overmixing develops too much gluten, making the bread tough and dense. Stop once no dry flour streaks remain, so the batter stays light and the leavening gas is preserved.

“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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