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Dessert

Sponge-cake Roll

A rolled sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sponge-cake Roll

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).

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Combine the sugar and flour, then mix in the cream of tartar.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  3. Pour the batter into a biscuit pan and bake quickly.

  4. Once baked, turn the cake out onto a damp cloth.

Roll

  1. Spread a layer of dressing over the surface and roll up the cake while warm.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

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
Beaten whites trap air that gives the sponge its light, open structure.
Flour
Provides structure, which sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender.
Cream of tartar
Acid that stabilises beaten egg whites and reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. The whites hold the air that makes the sponge rise. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense, flat cake that may crack 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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