Name: Sarah's Sally Lunns
Ingredients: 1 quart flour; 4 eggs; 1 pint milk; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1 tablespoon sugar

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 ↓

Sarah's Sally Lunns

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.
Beat the eggs until lemon-colored.
Add the milk to the flour mixture, then add the beaten eggs.
Melt the butter and stir it into the mixture.

Bake

Pour the batter into a biscuit tin and bake 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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: Forms the main structure that holds the bread's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs: Add structure, richness, and help the batter set as it bakes.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps form a tender crumb.
Butter: Adds fat for softness and a rich flavor.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise in the oven.

“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.