Sally Lunn can be described as a round tea bread (or tea cake, the term some would prefer to use) made from a rich yeast dough containing flour, milk or cream, eggs, a little sugar, and sometimes a little grated lemon peel or mixed sweet spice. This may be made as one large or several small buns, and can be baked in a mould, or shaped by hand and baked on a sheet. A Sally Lunn is traditionally served very fresh, split into two or even three layers, with butter or clotted cream.
The derivation of the name is a subject which has excited many pages of prose. Ayto (1993) cites two references in print from the late 18th century. The earlier (from Philip Thicknesse’s Valetudinarian’s Bath Guide, 1780) tells of a fiddler who dropped dead after ‘a hearty breakfast of spungy hot rolls, or Sally Luns’. The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1798 also referred to them as hot rolls, ‘gratefully and emphatically styled “Sally Lunns”’. The name Sally Lunn (Lunn is more usual than Lun) is said to commemorate a woman baker of that name who had a pastry-cook’s shop and cried her wares in the street.
