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Dessert

Sally-lunn

A sweet cake made with cornmeal, flour, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and baking powder, baked in a greased dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal with boiling water and let it sit.

  2. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the egg yolks and milk to the butter mixture, then mix in the cornmeal.

  4. Sift the flour with baking powder and gradually add it to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until light and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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.

  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. Milk + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Egg whites trapped by beating add lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender texture when creamed with butter.
Cornmeal
Gives the cake its coarse, slightly grainy texture and corn flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing knocks out the air beaten into the whites, which deflates the batter and leads to a denser cake. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

“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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