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Bread

Quick Sally Lunn

A quick batter-based bread made with sugar, butter, eggs, sweet milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Quick Sally Lunn

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk.

  4. Gradually add enough flour to make a batter as stiff as cake.

  5. Fold in the baking powder.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden and serve hot 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the bread hold its shape.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it is added until stiff like cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the bread rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the baking powder. Baking powder starts releasing gas once it is wet, so it should be folded in gently and the batter baked promptly to keep the rise light.

“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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