Skip to main content
Dessert

Sally Lunn

A sweet batter cake made with flour, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. In another bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs.

  4. Melt the butter and add it to the milk and egg mixture.

Make and bake

  1. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

  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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 structure that holds the bread's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the bread set and hold its shape.
Milk
Supplies moisture and tenderness to the batter and helps browning.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes to flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda, producing rise.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed. Mixing only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the bread stays tender rather than tough. Overmixing also knocks out the gas produced by the baking soda and cream of tartar, reducing rise.

“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