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Dessert

Roly-poly

A rolled cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, salt, baking powder, topped with chocolate, jelly, or fruit.

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 ↓

Roly-poly

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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

  3. Add sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder; mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a large shallow square tin.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake until done, then turn out onto a clean cloth.

  2. Spread the bottom with chocolate, jelly, or fruit evenly.

  3. Starting from one end, roll the cake tightly.

  4. Place it on a plate with the seam side down to cool.

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
Beaten eggs trap air and add structure to the batter as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown while it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.

The step that matters

Rolling the cake tightly. The cake must be rolled while still warm and pliable, since a cold cake cracks. A tight roll keeps the spiral even and the filling evenly distributed.

“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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