Sally-Lunn
1 quart of flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1 tablespoonful of white sugar. Rub in a heaping tablespoonful of butter and lard in equal parts, then rub in an Irish potato, mashed fine. Half a teacup of yeast. 3 eggs well beaten. Make up the dough to the consistency of light bread dough, with warm water in winter, and cold in summer. Knead half an hour. When it has risen light, handle lightly, put into a cake-mould and bake without a second kneading.--Mrs. S. T.
Another Recipe for Sally-Lunn. 1 quart of flour. 1 tablespoonful of yeast. 4 eggs well beaten. 2 oz. of butter or lard. 1 pint of milk.
Set it to rise in the pan in which it is to be baked.--Mrs. A. C. Another Recipe for Sally-Lunn. 3 pints of flour. 1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard. 3 eggs. 1 light teacup of yeast. 2 large tablespoonfuls of sugar. Use as much milk in mixing as will make a soft dough. Work this well, as it gets only one working. Then grease it, put it in a greased pan, and set it in a warm place to rise. Bake about an hour.--Mrs. Dr. T. Recipe for the Same. 1 quart of flour. 3 tablespoonfuls of yeast. 3 eggs. 1 saltspoonful of salt. Butter the size of an egg.
Make up with new milk into a tolerably stiff batter. Set it to rise and when risen pour into a mould and set to rise again, as light bread. Bake quickly.--Mrs. L.
Four versions of the same yeast-raised egg bread, all written for cooks who kept a crock of liquid yeast on hand and judged doughs by feel. The conversions below apply to any of the four.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume: a quart is 4 cups, roughly a pound of soft Southern flour (soft flour scoops lighter than modern all-purpose). Three pints is 6 cups. All-purpose works; a low-protein flour such as White Lily gives the tender, cakey crumb these recipes assume.
- The yeast is not modern yeast"A teacup of yeast" means homemade liquid yeast or barm, mostly water by volume. For a quart of flour use 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast, and add the displaced liquid back as milk or water so the dough still comes together soft.
- Teacup and saltspoonThe book gives no table of measures. A teacup in recipes of this period is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup (sometimes as little as 1/2), so a half teacup is a scant 1/3 to 1/2 cup. A saltspoonful is 1/4 teaspoon.
- Cake-mouldProbably a fluted ring or Turk's-head mould of the sort that preceded the Bundt pan, though the term could also cover a plain cake pan. A well-greased 9- or 10-inch tube pan is the nearest modern equivalent, and the central hole helps a rich egg dough of this size bake through.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no temperatures. 'Bake quickly' implies a hot oven, so start high (around 400-425F) and lower the heat once the loaf has taken color; an hour-long bake such as Mrs. Dr. T.'s suggests a moderate oven throughout. An internal temperature of 190-200F is a surer guide than the clock.
- Knead half an hourMrs. S. T.'s dough is enriched with egg, butter and potato but made up to the consistency of light bread dough; half an hour of hand work translates to roughly 8-10 minutes in a stand mixer with the dough hook, until the dough pulls away from the bowl but still tacks to a finger.
- Only one rise, handled lightlyThe hinge in the first and third versions: the dough is shaped, or simply set to rise in its buttered pan, and never punched down again. Deflating it after the rise costs the open, tender crumb that distinguishes Sally Lunn from an ordinary loaf.
- Warm water in winter, cold in summerThe instruction adjusts for an unheated kitchen, cold in winter and hot in summer. In a modern house use liquid at about 100F year round and let it rise until nearly doubled, 1 to 1 1/2 hours, rather than by the times implied here.
- The potatoOne medium boiled and riced potato, about 1/2 cup. It holds moisture and feeds the yeast; the bread stays soft a day longer for it.
- YieldThe quart-of-flour versions suit one 9- or 10-inch tube pan and serve 8 to 10; Mrs. Dr. T.'s 3-pint version is half again larger and needs a bigger pan or two. Serve hot, torn or cut in wedges, with butter.
Sally Lunn came to Virginia from England, where it was a teatime bread associated with Bath; the name is usually traced either to a supposed eighteenth-century Bath baker named Sally Lunn or, in the tidier folk etymology, to the French soleil et lune for its golden top and pale crumb. Neither derivation is documented, and both should be treated as tradition rather than fact. What is certain is that the bread took firm hold in the Chesapeake, where wheat flour was plentiful and hot breads at breakfast and tea were a point of household pride. That Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) prints four versions signed by four different contributors tells you how thoroughly it had naturalized: every good cook had her own proportions, and Marion Cabell Tyree's method of drawing contributions from a large number of named lady contributors across Virginia and neighbouring states preserved the disagreements instead of smoothing them out.