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Quick Sally-Lunn
1 quart of flour. Half cup of butter. 2 eggs. 2 cups of milk. Two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar. 1 teaspoonful of soda. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. 1 saltspoonful of salt. Bake fifteen minutes.--Mrs. Dr. S.
A chemically leavened stand-in for the yeast-raised Sally Lunn, written for cooks who knew the original and wanted it in half an hour. The measurements are by volume in vessels of the period, and the oven instruction is missing entirely.
- A quart of flourFour cups, spooned and levelled, or roughly 16 to 18 oz of all-purpose flour. Nineteenth-century Southern flour was generally softer than modern bread flour; all-purpose, or a cup of the total swapped for cake flour, is closer to the intended crumb.
- SaltspoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. It was a real measure, the small spoon that went with a salt cellar, not a vague pinch.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThis pair is homemade baking powder in the 2:1 ratio that was standard before commercial powders were reliable. Two teaspoons cream of tartar plus one of soda is roughly the leavening equivalent of about four teaspoons of double-acting baking powder, and the substitution works if you prefer it.
- Work fastCream of tartar reacts with soda as soon as the batter is wet, and there is no second lift in the oven. Have the pan greased and the oven fully hot before the liquids meet the dry ingredients, then get it in immediately.
- The ovenNo temperature is given. A fifteen-minute bake implies a hot oven; somewhere around 425F is a reasonable modern guess, hot enough to brown before the crumb dries out.
- Pan and timingFifteen minutes only holds for a shallow sheet, muffin rings, or a cast-iron pan of small cakes. Baked in the tall fluted Turk's-head mold associated with Sally Lunn it will need 35-40 minutes at 375F, tested with a skewer.
- Butter and milkHalf a cup of butter is 4 oz, one stick. The recipe gives no method; rubbing or creaming it in rather than melting suits the thick batter. Whole milk; the batter should be a thick drop batter, not pourable like pancake batter.
- YieldNo yield is given; a batter built on a quart of flour makes a large pan, or well over a dozen muffin-sized cakes. Serve hot with butter, as a bread at breakfast or tea rather than as a dessert.
Sally Lunn came to Virginia from England as a rich, yeast-risen tea bread, traditionally associated with Bath and with a baker or hawker of that name; the alternative story deriving it from the French soleil et lune is often repeated but not documented. The full version is a slow business of sponge, rising, and a second proof in the mold, which is why cookbooks of the 1870s and 80s carry a "quick" Sally Lunn alongside it. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (Marion Cabell Tyree, 1879) was assembled from contributions by named housekeepers, and this one arrives credited only as "Mrs. Dr. S." The recipe is a small record of how cheap, dependable cream of tartar changed hot-bread baking in the American South: the shape and the name of an heirloom yeast bread survive, while the method has been replaced by something a cook could start after the family was already awake.