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Dessert

Jelly Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, rose‑water, nutmeg, and topped with jelly or marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir together until very light: half a pound of fresh butter and half a pound of powdered white sugar.

  2. Beat twelve eggs very light, and stir them into the butter and sugar, alternately with a pound of sifted flour.

  3. Add a beaten nutmeg, and half a wine‑glass of rose‑water.

Bake the cakes

  1. Prepare a flat circular tin plate, lay it on your griddle or in the oven, and grease it well with butter.

  2. Pour a large ladle‑full of the batter onto the tin.

  3. Bake as you would a buck‑wheat cake, ensuring a good shape; no turning required.

  4. Bake as many cakes as desired, placing each on a separate plate.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread jelly or marmalade over the top of each cake, then lay another cake on top.

  2. Spread jelly on the new top and repeat until you have a pile of five or six cakes, forming one large thick cake.

  3. Trim the edges with a penknife and cover the top with powdered sugar, or ice it with nonpareils or sugar‑sand in triangular divisions.

  4. When ready to eat, cut into three‑cornered slices as you would a pie.

Make the red icing

  1. To make a red icing colouring, combine twenty grains of cochineal powder, twenty grains of cream of tartar, and twenty grains of powdered alum.

  2. Put the mixture into a gill of cold soft water and boil slowly until reduced to half.

  3. Strain through thin muslin and cork up for use.

  4. Use a small quantity to colour icing pink; with pink icing, use white nonpareils.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

696Calories
20 gProtein
19 gFat
109 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour and creaming with sugar.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give the cake a light texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin cakes together.
Eggs
Add moisture and help the batter set and hold its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Grease the tin well and bake the batter without turning. A well-greased tin lets the thin cake release cleanly, and steady heat sets the batter evenly so each layer keeps its shape for stacking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg. 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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