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Dessert

Jelly Rolls

A baked cake rolled with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Jelly Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and mix

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Add sugar, water, and salt to the yolks.

  4. Sift baking powder into the flour and gradually add it to the mixture.

Bake and roll

  1. Pour the batter into long shallow tins and bake until golden.

  2. Turn the cake out onto a damp towel, spread with jelly, and roll it up.

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 + flourtop 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. 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
Provide structure and lift through beaten yolks that trap air in the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the thin sponge together when rolled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sponge a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the batter rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Rolling the cake up with the jelly. Rolling the sponge while it is still warm and pliable on a damp towel keeps it from cracking. Once it cools and stiffens, it is much more likely to split at the fold.

“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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