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Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet yeast cake made with light dough, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sally Lunn

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Combine the light dough, melted butter, sugar, beaten eggs, dissolved baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add flour gradually until the dough is stiff enough to knead.

  3. Set the dough aside to rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into cakes about ½ inch thick.

  2. Place one cake in a greased pan, cover with soft butter, and lay another cake on top.

  3. Let it rise again until light, then bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  4. Serve warm, and any leftovers are good cold for breakfast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Hop yeast light dough
Provides the leavening that makes the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake hold its rise and crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the dough to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light before baking. Rising develops the gas bubbles that give the cake its light texture. Under-proofed dough stays dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse 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.

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