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Sally Lunn
Mrs. J. H. Brown.
One quart of warm milk, one-half cup of butter, one of sugar, five eggs and one cup of yeast; flour enough for stiff batter. Bake one hour.
A yeast-raised batter bread rather than a cake, and the original assumes you know the two things it does not say: that the batter has to rise, and how hot the oven should be.
- The hinge: it must rise twiceThe hinge: it needs rising. Nothing in the text mentions proofing, though the cup of yeast makes plain that rising was assumed. Beat the batter smooth, cover, and let it rise until doubled and bubbly (1 1/2 to 2 hours), then beat it down, turn it into the pan and let it rise again until it nears the rim before baking.
- One cup of yeastThis means a cup of liquid yeast or barm, a wet home-kept culture that supplied both leaven and moisture. Substitute two packets (about 4 1/2 tsp) of active dry yeast bloomed in a little of the warm milk, and remember that the barm was a cup of liquid over and above the quart of milk, so make up that cup of liquid or use less flour.
- Warm milk means warm, not hotBring the milk to about 105-110F. Well above that the yeast suffers, and heat around 130F and up will kill it; overheated milk is one common reason a Sally Lunn comes out flat and dense.
- Flour enough for stiff batterWith a quart of milk expect roughly 8 to 9 cups of all-purpose flour. The target is a thick batter that drops heavily from a spoon rather than a kneadable dough; it should not hold a shape.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Bake at 350F. An hour is right for one very large loaf; the interior should reach about 190F.
- The panTraditionally a deep fluted tube mold (a Turk's head), which lets a wet batter of this size cook through. A 10-inch tube pan works; this quantity will also fill two 9-inch round cake pans or two loaf tins, which will bake in 35 to 45 minutes.
- Butter and sugarHalf a cup of butter is a stick; a cup of sugar makes this a mildly sweet bread, not a dessert. Cream them together, then beat in the eggs before adding the milk so the batter emulsifies.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk makes a substantial loaf serving 12 or more. It is meant for the tea or breakfast table, torn or cut in wedges and eaten warm with butter; it stales quickly and is best the day it is baked.
Sally Lunn is an English bread that became thoroughly Southern American. It is generally traced to Bath in the late eighteenth century, and the name has attracted more folk etymology than evidence: the most repeated story invents a bunwoman named Sally Lunn, while another derives it from the French soleil et lune for the golden top and pale crumb. Neither is documented, and the earliest printed English recipes simply treat it as a known thing. In nineteenth-century American cookbooks Sally Lunn turns up among the breakfast and tea breads, valued because it used the same liquid yeast a household already kept for its daily loaves but produced something rich enough to pass as cake. A deep fluted mold and serving it hot are often said to be what separate it from the plainer risen breads it sat beside, though this recipe specifies neither.