Sally Lunn

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Sally Lunn is the name given to a type of bun associated with Bath, England.

There are those who say that Sally was the daughter of a pastry cook in Bath, England. Because the bun is similar to a French brioche, others say she must have been a French Huguenot woman who baked them. Then they say that no French lady would be named Lunn or called Sally. Others say there was no one named Sally at all; the words are a corruption of "sol et lune," the French words for sun and moon that may have been used to describe the round shape of the buns, or perhaps a French word like "solimeme" for a type of brioche.

Sally Lunn is one of those recipes that is so old it can be called a "receipt," the name given to instructions in cookery up until several generations ago. The way to prepare and serve it, however, is as varied as the stories about why it is called "Sally Lunn."

There are recipes that call for yeast and those that call for baking powder. There are recipes that call for half a pound of butter, or butter the size of an egg, or shortening in place of butter. There are recipes that require a lot of beating or no beating, . There are recipes using cornmeal and there are recipes that call for adding lemon peel and spices to the flour. Some say to put the dough in a square pan, others call for a round pan, loaf pans, muffin tins, a Turk's head iron mold, even a bundt or tube pan.

Visitors to Bath, England, however, for decades, if not centuries, have felt they know who Sally Lunn was, where she lived and how she made those tea breads. They have in fact been to her house and had afternoon tea in the restaurant upstairs over the ancient kitchen with its foundations in medieval Bath and ancient Roman Aquae Sulis. Possibly the reason for the endurance of the Sally Lunn legend is attributable to the fact that the house is both a museum and a restaurant. It is a museum because it is one of the few remaining buildings from that era in Bath preceding the Georgian period so familiar to lovers of Jane Austen novels.

The Sally Lunn Bun should not be confused with the more famous Bath bun, a small round bun containing of sugar and currants.