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Sally Lunn

A yeasted bread dough made with flour, salt, sugar, butter, lard, mashed potato, yeast, eggs, and water, baked in a cake mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Rub in the butter and lard until well mixed.

  3. Add the mashed potato and yeast.

  4. Mix in the beaten eggs.

  5. Gradually add warm or cold water to form a light bread dough.

  6. Knead the dough for half an hour.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the dough rise until light.

  2. Handle the dough gently.

  3. Place the dough into a cake mold.

  4. Bake without a second kneading.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 once mixed with water and kneaded.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind and give structure to the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and turn light.
Butter and lard
Add fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Mashed potato
Adds moisture and starch that help keep the bun soft.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment and trap gas; rising too little leaves a dense bun, while over-handling knocks out the gas already formed, so the dough should be handled gently.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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