Skip to main content
Bread

Sally Lunn

A sweet, yeasted bread roll made with flour, egg, lard, sugar, and yeast, baked until golden and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, egg, lard, sugar, and yeast to make a soft dough.

  2. Set the dough aside to rise until light.

  3. Roll the dough into two flat cakes.

Shape and rise

  1. Grease a pan well with butter and place the first layer in the pan.

  2. Lay the second layer on top and set aside to rise again until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake until golden.

  2. Just before removing from the oven, dampen the top with sweet milk or cream.

  3. Serve hot, opened and spread with butter.

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. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the bread's shape.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a tender crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that softens the crumb and keeps the bread tender.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise until light.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light, airy crumb. Rising too briefly leaves the bread dense, while over-proofing can make it 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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes