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Bread

Sally Lunn

Sally Lunn is a rich, yeast-raised bread made with eggs, butter, and milk, baked in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, break the eggs into the flour.

  2. Add the butter and lard mixture, salt, sugar, yeast, and milk.

  3. Beat all the ingredients together for 20 minutes.

Rise and bake

  1. Butter your molds and pour the batter in to rise.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with butter.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it rises and bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the bread set and brown.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise, giving the bread its light texture.
Butter and lard mixture
Adds fat for tenderness, richness, and a softer crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the dough develop a soft texture and golden crust.

The step that matters

Beat the batter for 20 minutes. Long beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives the batter the elasticity to trap gas from the yeast and rise well. Beating too briefly leaves a dense loaf.

“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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