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Dessert

Sponge Cake Roll

A light sponge cake rolled with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sponge Cake Roll

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Break in the eggs and beat everything together until well mixed.

  4. Pour the batter into square jelly tins.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake until light brown.

  2. Once done, turn the cake out onto a clean surface.

  3. Spread jelly quickly over the cake.

  4. Carefully roll the cake up and wrap each roll in a clean napkin.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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, trapping air to make the sponge light and flexible for rolling.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the sponge its set crumb structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air in the beaten batter, adding tenderness and browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the sponge rise and become airy.
Jelly
Adds sweetness, moisture and flavour inside the rolled cake.

The step that matters

Carefully roll the cake up. Rolling a freshly baked sponge while it is still warm keeps it flexible; once it cools it becomes brittle and is likely to crack. Spreading the jelly quickly also keeps the cake from drying and stiffening before it is 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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