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Bread

Sally Lunn Without Yeast

A quick, yeast‑free batter bread made with eggs, flour, butter, lard, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Without Yeast

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.

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs separately until fluffy.

  2. In a large bowl, combine flour, butter, lard, sugar (if using), cream of tartar, and baking soda.

Make the batter

  1. Mix in enough sweet milk to form a batter as thick as pancake batter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda and cream of tartar in a little sweet milk and add to the batter.

  3. Let the batter sit for 5 to 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the batter quickly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and light airiness to the crumb.
Flour
Flour provides the main structure that holds the bread's shape as it bakes.
Butter
Butter adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Lard
Lard adds fat that keeps the crumb soft and tender.
Cream of tartar
Cream of tartar supplies acid that reacts with baking soda to produce rising gas.
Baking soda
Baking soda releases carbon dioxide when combined with the acid, leavening the batter.

The step that matters

Bake the batter quickly after adding the leavening. Cream of tartar and baking soda start releasing gas as soon as they are wet. Baking the batter promptly traps those bubbles before they escape, so the bread rises well.

“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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