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Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A rolled cake made from a batter of eggs, sugar, flour, and boiling water, topped 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 ↓

Rolled Jelly Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately until fluffy.

  3. Mix the sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.

  4. Gradually add the boiling water to the dry ingredients, mixing well.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and roll

  1. Spread the batter thinly on a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake until golden, then spread jelly over the cake while hot.

  3. Roll the cake up carefully and let it 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
Whipped yolks and whites provide the airy structure that lifts the sponge.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give the beaten eggs a stable, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the set framework of the sponge once heated in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the thin sponge rises and stays light.
Boiling water
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads thinly and bakes evenly.

The step that matters

Rolling the cake while hot. A warm sponge is flexible and rolls without cracking. Once it cools, the crumb stiffens and tears, so the roll should be made promptly after the jelly is spread.

“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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