common names for this bolete include "pine boletus" and "sticky bun"—the latter referring to its resemblance to the pastry. German naturalist August Batsch described Boletus volvatus (the specific epithet derived from the Latin volva, meaning "sheath", "covering" or "womb") alongside B. luteus in his 1783 work Elenchus Fungorum. Batsch placed both of these species, along with B. bovinus and the now obsolete names Boletus mutabilis and B. canus, in a grouping of similar boletes he called "subordo Suilli". Boletus volvatus is now considered a synonym of Suillus luteus. Several authors have placed the slippery jack in other genera: Finnish mycologist Petter Karsten classified it as Cricunopus luteus in 1881—the genus Cricinopus defined by yellow adnate tubes; Lucien Quélet classified it as Viscipellis luteus in 1886, and Ixocomus luteus in 1888; and Paul Christoph Hennings placed it in the section Cricinopus of the genus Boletopsis in 1900. In works published before 1987, the slippery jack was written fully as , as the description by Linnaeus had been name sanctioned in 1821 by the "father of mycology", Swedish naturalist Elias Magnus Fries. The starting date for all the mycota had been set by general agreement as 1 January 1821, the date of Fries's work. Furthermore, as Roussel's description of Suillus predated this as well, the authority for the genus was assigned to British botanist Samuel Frederick Gray in the first volume of his 1821 work A Natural Arrangement of British Plants. The 1987 edition of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature changed the rules on the starting date and primary work for names of fungi, and names can now be considered valid as far back as 1 May 1753, the date of publication of Linnaeus's work. In 1986, a collection of fruit bodies from Sweden was designated as the neotype of Suillus luteus. In their 1964 monograph on North American Suillus species, Alexander H. Smith and Harry Delbert Thiers classified S. luteus in the series Suilli of the section Suillus in genus Suillus. This group is characterized by the presence of either a ring on the stipe, a partial veil adhering to the cap margin, or a "false veil" not attached to the stipe but initially covering the tube cavity. Species closely related to Suillus luteus include S. pseudobrevipes (a sister species), S. brevipes and S. weaverae (formerly Fuscoboletinus weaverae). A genetic study of nucleotide DNA reinforced the species' monophyly and low