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Bread

Raised Sally Lunn

A yeasted bread loaf made with flour, salt, sugar, yeast, milk, eggs, and butter.

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 ↓

Raised Sally Lunn

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast.

  2. Add enough milk to make a drop batter.

  3. If making for tea, let rise for 6 hours, then add melted butter.

  4. If making for breakfast, prepare batter with salt, sugar, flour, yeast, and milk, and keep in a cool place.

  5. In the morning, add the egg yolks and whites.

Bake

  1. Mix well and fill muffin pan two-thirds full.

  2. Let rise for 20 minutes.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 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. 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and lighten the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen crumb once baked.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising, which leavens the batter and gives it lightness.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, softening the crumb and adding richness.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise before adding butter. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build the batter's lift. Rising for the full time before the fat goes in lets the yeast work, while adding butter too early can weaken the gluten network and slow the rise.

“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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