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Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet yeast bread made with eggs, butter, lard, sugar, milk, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sally Lunn

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the butter, lard, sugar, and salt.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk and enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  4. Add the homemade yeast and mix well.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the batter rise until doubled in size.

  2. Shape the dough into pie pans and let it rise again before baking.

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 set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, along with flavor, to the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb soft and tender.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the batter its structure.
Homemade yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas, which makes the batter rise.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until doubled. The yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the gluten network. Under-proofed dough bakes up dense, while over-proofed dough may collapse and lose structure.

“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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