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Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet yeast dough cake made with milk, eggs, butter, yeast, sugar, salt, and flour, baked into thin round cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 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.

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk and melt the butter in it.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs, salt, yeast, and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  3. Let the batter rise overnight.

  4. In the morning, add the sugar and work the mixture well.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into thin round cakes and let rise for four hours.

  2. Brush with egg and sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  3. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C) for about twenty minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 richness and structure, and help bind the batter and give the buns a tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, leavening the batter so the buns become light.
Butter
Adds fat for a soft, tender texture and richer flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, adds sweetness, and helps the crust brown during baking.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that holds the risen batter and gives the buns their structure.

The step that matters

Overnight rise of the batter. The batter must rise slowly and fully, because yeast gas creates the lightness of the buns. Too little rise leaves them dense, while the later sugar addition must be worked in well so the yeast stays active and the dough stays evenly textured.

“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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