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Dessert

Sally Lunn

A yeasted cake made with light dough, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, and flour, baked in layers.

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

Make the dough

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

  2. Add enough flour to make the dough stiff enough to knead well.

  3. Set the dough aside to rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into cakes about ½ inch thick to fit your pans.

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

  3. Allow the cakes to rise again until light.

  4. Bake until golden and serve immediately.

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

Light dough from hop yeast
Provides the leavening that makes the cake rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake hold its shape while baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the crust turn golden as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to help it rise and lighten the texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to build gas bubbles that give the cake its lightness. Rising too briefly leaves a dense crumb, and over-rising can collapse the structure before baking.

“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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