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Bread

Sally Lunn Raised Gems

A yeasted bread made with milk, butter, lard, egg, and flour, baked in a hot oven.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the milk and add the butter and lard until melted.

  2. Let the mixture cool to lukewarm, then dissolve the yeast in it.

  3. Add the flour and beaten egg, mixing until combined.

Rise and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into greased gem pans.

  2. Let the pans sit aside for an hour or until the batter is light.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and turn light and airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that holds the risen structure of the gems.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the gems set as they bake.
Butter and lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid so the flour can hydrate into batter.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until light. Yeast needs time to produce gas before baking. Rising too briefly leaves dense gems, while the batter must be cooled to lukewarm first so the heat does not kill the yeast.

“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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