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Bread

Sally Lunn

A sweet yeast bread made with flour, butter, milk, eggs, and brewer's yeast.

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 ↓

Sally Lunn

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the butter in the milk.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and yeast.

  3. Add the warmed milk and butter mixture to the dry ingredients.

  4. Mix in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Rise and bake

  1. Pour the batter into square pans and let it rise.

  2. Bake before the batter sours.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set firmly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and sugars that help the crust brown and the crumb stay soft.
Brewer's yeast
Produces gas during fermentation, making the batter rise and become light.

The step that matters

Bake before the batter sours. Yeast keeps fermenting while the batter rises. If it rises too long, the gluten weakens, the loaf can collapse, and sour acids build up in the flavour.

“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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