Skip to main content
Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet yeast bread made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, yeast, and flour, baked into a light, fluffy loaf.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the warm sweet milk and wet yeast, then gradually mix in enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  3. Once the batter is light, stir in 2 more tablespoons of flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and let it rise again.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. When baked, butter each cake and stack them on top of each other like a jelly cake.

  4. Serve hot.

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as they are beaten and combined.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, giving the bread a soft, rich crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Wet yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and lighten.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter and baked crumb together.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise again in the pans. Yeast needs time to produce gas before baking. If the batter is under-risen, the cakes bake dense; if over-risen, they may collapse or turn coarse. Watch for a visibly puffed batter before 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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes