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Masselon Sally Lun
One half cup butter, three fourths cup sugar, beaten well together, four eggs beaten separately, one and one half cups milk, one teaspoon soda, two teaspoons cream-tarter, three cups sifted flour, one cup Indian meal, a little salt.
This is the American quick-bread form of Sally Lunn, leavened with soda and cream of tartar rather than yeast, and stiffened with cornmeal. The recipe gives ingredients only, so pan, heat and time have to be supplied.
- Indian mealThis is cornmeal; historically stone-ground yellow or white meal, generally finer than modern coarse polenta grind. A fine or medium grind will give a tender crumb; coarse meal will read as gritty.
- Soda and cream-tarterOne teaspoon soda with two teaspoons cream of tartar is the classic 1:2 pairing that predates packaged baking powder; by the usual conversion (1/4 tsp soda plus 1/2 tsp cream of tartar per teaspoon of baking powder) it corresponds to roughly 4 teaspoons of modern baking powder. If you substitute, mix the powder into the flour and get the batter into the oven promptly, since the old combination begins reacting the moment the milk goes in.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThis is the period shorthand for beating yolks and whites apart, stirring the yolks into the butter and sugar, and folding the whipped whites in last. The whites contribute lift alongside the chemical leavening, so fold rather than stir.
- OvenThe original gives no temperature or time; 350F is a reasonable modern setting for this kind of batter.
- Pan and timeBake in a buttered 9-inch tube pan or a 9x13 pan, roughly 35 to 45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back. Sally Lunn was often baked in a ring or turban mould.
- A little saltRead this as about half a teaspoon. Butter of the period was often sold salted, so taste the batter's balance rather than following the vague instruction blindly.
- Yield and servingThe quantities make a generous cake of about ten to twelve breakfast portions. It belongs on the table hot, torn or cut in wedges, with butter and preserves; it stales quickly and is much better the day it is baked.
Sally Lunn began as a rich yeast-raised English bread associated with Bath, where the name is traditionally traced either to an eighteenth-century baker called Sally Lunn or to a corruption of sol et lune, sun and moon, for the pale crumb and golden crust. It travelled to America early and settled deeply in Southern breakfast cookery, where by the later nineteenth century soda and cream of tartar versions circulated alongside the older yeast-raised ones, the chemical leavenings suiting a bread wanted in an hour rather than overnight. The cup of Indian meal here is the American signature: cornmeal was cheap, always in the house, and steadily worked its way into wheat-flour recipes on this side of the Atlantic. "Masselon" is not a standard spelling and is most likely a family or contributor's name attached to the recipe, of the sort that fills community and household books of this period.