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Dessert

Jelly Roll

A baked roll made from a sweet batter, flavored, and rolled with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Roll

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, flour, baking powder, and beaten eggs. Mix until smooth.

  2. If the batter is too thick, add water. Add flavoring to taste.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and spread evenly.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake for about 15–20 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. Let the roll cool.

  3. Roll the cooled cake with your favorite jelly.

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
Beaten eggs provide structure and lift, setting the sponge as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it is mixed with the eggs and bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the sponge and helps it brown during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the roll cool before rolling. A warm sponge is fragile and tears or cracks when rolled. Cooling lets it firm up enough to bend without breaking around the jelly.

“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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