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Dessert

Swiss Rolls

A sweet rolled cake made from a batter of eggs, flour, powdered sugar, and raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Swiss 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and powdered sugar together until thick and creamy.

  2. Gently fold in the flour.

  3. Spread the mixture evenly on well-buttered baking sheets.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Remove from pans, spread with raspberry jam, and roll up.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + raspberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,262 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped to trap air, giving the thin sponge its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the sponge so it holds its shape when rolled.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sponge and helps the whipped eggs stay thick and stable.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness, acidity and moisture to the filling inside the rolled sponge.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and powdered sugar until thick and creamy. The whipped eggs are the only leavening in this batter, so they must be beaten well to trap enough air. Under-beaten eggs give a dense, flat roll that cracks when rolled. Folding the flour gently preserves that air.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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