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Dessert

Tea Cakes or Sally Lunns

A yeasted cake made with flour, butter, milk, yeast, sugar, salt, and egg, baked in tins and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tea Cakes or Sally Lunns

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the yeast with the sugar in part of the lukewarm milk and butter.

  3. Pour this mixture into the center of the flour.

  4. Add the rest of the milk, the egg, and the salt.

  5. Knead well to form a light dough.

Shape and rise

  1. Warm and grease three round tins, then place the dough in them.

  2. Cover with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for one hour.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15-20 minutes.

  2. For the glaze, dissolve 2 teaspoons of sugar in 4 teaspoons of milk and brush over the cakes.

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

Fine flour
Provides the structure that the dough builds around as it is kneaded.
German yeast
Produces gas during rising, which makes the dough light and airy.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the crumb and softens its texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast to form the dough and adds moisture.
Egg
Adds protein for structure and richness to the dough.
Castor sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Rising the dough in a warm place. Yeast activity drives the rise, and a dough kept too cool will rise slowly and stay dense, while too much heat can kill the yeast and stall the rise.

“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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