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Southern Sally Lunn
One quart of flour, three eggs, one teaspoon of butter, one teacup of yeast, one pint of new milk. Beat the yolks of eggs light. Stir in the yeast, then butter, milk and flour. Beat the whites light, and add last. Set to rise and bake in a pan or muffin rings when ready.-Mrs Charles Brinton Coxe, Philadelphia.
A yeast-raised batter bread rather than a kneaded loaf, and it behaves like one: the dough should pour and flop rather than hold a shape. A few of the measures need translating before it will work in a modern kitchen.
- Fold the whites in last, and gentlyThis is the hinge. The beaten whites are the only lightness beyond the yeast, and if they are stirred in hard they collapse and the bread bakes dense. Fold them through the batter with a spatula until barely combined, then set it to rise as the recipe directs.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume: about 4 cups, roughly 1 lb 2 oz / 500 g of all-purpose. Nineteenth-century flour was softer than modern bread flour, so all-purpose is the closer match.
- A teacup of yeastA teacup was reckoned variously at about a half to three-quarters of a cup; this means homemade liquid yeast or barm, not dry yeast. Substitute 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast, and add extra warm milk or water -- up to the volume the barm would have supplied -- to make up the lost liquid.
- New milkFresh sweet milk, as opposed to skimmed or soured; on a farm it might still be warm from the cow. Use whole milk warmed to about 105F so the yeast is not shocked. There is no need to scald pasteurized milk.
- One teaspoon of butterLean for the period; Sally Lunn recipes generally use more. The recipe does not specify melted butter, but softened or melted butter is easiest to work into a batter; a tablespoon or two gives a richer crumb without changing the method. The recipe also carries no salt, which modern palates will notice: about 1 1/2 teaspoons is standard for this much flour.
- Set to riseExpect 1 1/2 to 2 hours for the batter to double in a warm room, then a second rise of 30 to 45 minutes once it is in the pan. "When ready" means when the batter has visibly domed and looks bubbly.
- BakingThe original assumes an experienced hand at the range. A 9- or 10-inch tube pan at 375F for 35 to 45 minutes; muffin rings or a muffin tin at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes. It is done at an internal temperature of about 200F.
- YieldOne large tube loaf, or about 18 muffins. Best eaten warm the day it is baked; it stales quickly. Sally Lunn was commonly split and toasted or buttered.
Sally Lunn is an English teacake, generally traced to Bath, where it was sold as a large enriched round to be split and buttered; the name is often said to derive from a French *soleil et lune* or from a real baker of that name, though neither account is documented. In America the bread took a different turn, becoming a soft yeast batter poured into a mold or muffin rings and served hot at breakfast or tea, particularly in Virginia, Maryland and the older Eastern seaboard households. That this version arrives from a Philadelphia contributor and is labeled "Southern" says something about how firmly the dish had attached itself to Southern hospitality.