Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Quick Sally Lunn
Quick Sally Lunn
One cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter; stir well together, and then add one or two eggs; put in one good pint of sweet milk, and with sufficient flour to make a batter about as stiff as cake; put in three teaspoons of Cook's Friend baking powder; bake and eat hot with butter, for tea or breakfast.
A one-bowl quick bread standing in for the yeast-raised original, with almost everything except the flour and the oven left to the cook's judgment. Two things need pinning down before you start: how much flour, and how hot.
- Flour quantity is the gap"Sufficient flour to make a batter about as stiff as cake" with a pint of milk lands around 3 1/2 to 4 cups. Add it in stages and stop when the batter drops heavily from the spoon rather than pouring.
- Sweet milkFresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the soured milk or buttermilk that would be paired with saleratus. A pint is 2 cups by American measure; in a Canadian book the imperial pint of 20 fl oz (about 2 1/2 cups) is also possible.
- Cook's FriendA baking powder brand sold in Canada in this period. Modern double-acting baking powder substitutes one for one; three teaspoons is on the low side for the amount of flour indicated, but workable.
- No oven temperature givenThe recipe says only 'bake.' A moderate oven, around 375F, is a reasonable modern reading of the instruction.
- Pan and timingThe recipe names no pan; a greased 9x13 or a 9-inch tube pan would suit, 30 to 40 minutes depending on depth, until a skewer comes out clean. Sally Lunn is often associated with a tall ring or mould.
- Eggs'One or two' leaves the choice to the cook. Two should give a lighter, more tender crumb.
- Cream the butter properlyThe recipe's only real technique is the first line. Beat the sugar and softened butter until pale before the eggs go in, or the crumb will be denser.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten. It is meant to be torn or cut hot and buttered at once; day-old slices toast well but the fresh texture does not keep.
Sally Lunn proper is a rich, lightly sweetened yeast bread associated with Bath, England, from the late eighteenth century, its name often traced to a baker of that name though no such person is firmly documented; other accounts derive it from the French solilemme or soleil et lune. What matters here is the word Quick: by the time The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in the 1870s, chemical leavening sold under brand names like Cook's Friend had made it possible to put a hot, cakey bread on the tea table in under an hour, with none of the sponging and rising the original demanded. The result is barely the same bread, but it kept the name because it filled the same slot in the day: something warm and buttered, served at breakfast or at the evening tea, and eaten before it cooled.