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Dessert

Jelly Cake

A cake made from a batter of sugar, eggs, butter, milk, flour, and baking powder, layered with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Jelly Cake

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. Beat the sugar and eggs together for 1–2 minutes.

  2. Add the melted butter, milk, baking powder, and flour; mix until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans, spreading it as thin as possible.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden and set.

  2. Once cooled, layer three sheets with jelly in between and dust powdered sugar on top.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 as they set the thin sheets while holding air from beating.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the thin sheets.
Flour
Forms the structure that sets the batter into firm sheets when baked.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the thin sheets rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Spreading the batter thin. Thin layers bake quickly and evenly, so they set before drying out. Thick batter in a jelly cake pan bakes unevenly and may turn dense or cracked.

“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.

More jelly cake recipes

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