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Sally Lunns
Place a pint boiling milk in a basin and put aside until lukewarm, then add a half ounce concentrated yeast, stir well, and gradually add sufficient flour to make a stiff batter. Cover pan with a cloth and let raise in warm place for one and a half hours. Beat up two eggs with two ounces sugar in a bowl, add to batter with a saltspoon salt, two ounces butter, knead well for five minutes, cover with cloth again and let stand for twenty-five minutes more. Divide in twelve equal parts, roll them out on corner of a floured table to ball shape, then flatten to one-third-inch thickness. Arrange them on lightly buttered pastry sheet, lightly butter surface, dress on dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A straightforward enriched yeast bun, though the text has one glaring gap: it arranges the buns on a sheet and then jumps straight to serving them on a napkin. They must be proved and baked in between.
- The missing bakeAfter shaping and buttering the tops, let the rounds prove on the sheet until visibly puffed, roughly 30-40 minutes, then bake in a hot oven, about 400-425F, for 15-20 minutes until golden. Without this step you have raw dough on a napkin.
- Concentrated yeastThis means compressed fresh cake yeast. Half an ounce is about 14 g fresh, equivalent to roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant dried yeast or a scant 2 teaspoons of active dry.
- Scalded milkBoiling the milk and cooling it to lukewarm was usual in period recipes; the reason usually given is that a component of unscalded milk slackens dough, and scalding also killed off anything unwanted in unpasteurised milk. With modern pasteurised milk you can simply warm a pint (2 cups) to about 100F.
- Flour is unmeasured"Sufficient flour to make a stiff batter" is genuinely open. For a pint of milk expect a large quantity, on the order of 5 to 6 cups of plain flour in total across the sponge and the final dough; work to texture, not to a number.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. That is low for this quantity of dough; half a teaspoon or a little more suits modern palates.
- The butter and eggs go in lateThe eggs, sugar and butter are added only after the sponge has risen an hour and a half, so the yeast does its first work in an unenriched batter. Knead until the butter is fully absorbed and the dough is smooth rather than stopping at a strict five minutes.
- ShapingA third of an inch is thin for a bun; they rely on the second proof and oven spring for height. Keep them at least an inch and a half apart on the sheet.
- Yield and servingTwelve buns. The folded napkin is the usual period dressing for hot breads, and helps hold the heat as well as making the dish. Split and butter while hot.
Sally Lunn is associated above all with Bath, where a house in North Parade Passage still trades on the name, and where the name appears in print in the late eighteenth century. The origin of that name is unsettled: it is often said to derive from a Huguenot refugee baker called Solange Luyon, or from the French soleil et lune, sun and moon, for the golden top and pale crumb, but neither explanation is documented and both may be later inventions to explain a woman's name nobody recorded. Early recipes describe a rich, lightly sweetened yeast bread eaten hot with butter, distinct from plainer teacakes by its eggs and butter.