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Dessert

Jelly Rolls

A rolled cake made with eggs, butter, flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, salt, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, and salt; mix until combined.

  3. Pour the batter into well-buttered pans, spreading it to about ½ inch thick.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake until golden, then carefully remove from the pans.

  2. Place the cake on a cloth and spread jelly evenly over the top.

  3. Roll the cake while it is still hot to prevent crumbling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift by trapping air when beaten into the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps keep the cake moist.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to its fine, tender crumb and golden browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and moisture in the filling that spreads over the cake.

The step that matters

Roll the cake while it is still hot. Warm sponge is flexible and less likely to crack; once it cools, the structure stiffens and the cake tends to crumble when rolled.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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