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Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet, lightly leavened bread made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

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

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add the melted butter, 1 cup of milk, and the eggs to the dry ingredients.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the remaining cup of milk and stir it into the mixture. Mix everything together until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two round pans.

  2. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the crumb set and the loaf hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lift the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the bread rise.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk before stirring it in. Baking soda needs to be evenly dispersed so it reacts with the cream of tartar throughout the batter. Unevenly mixed soda can leave pockets of bitterness or uneven rising.

“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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