Skip to main content
Dessert

Small Berry Roll

A rolled pastry filled with berries, sprinkled with sugar and butter, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Spread and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Small Berry 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.

Prepare the roll

  1. Make a cream pastry with 1 pint of flour and roll it thin.

  2. Spread the pastry with strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and butter, then roll it all together.

Bake

  1. Place in a pan, sprinkle the top with sugar and bits of butter.

  2. Add enough water to create plenty of juice.

  3. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven until well done.

  4. If there isn't enough juice, make a little extra sauce.

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. Spread + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + spreadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the pastry that wraps and holds the fruit filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pastry and melts into the fruit during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the top brown during baking.
Strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries
Provide the fruit filling and the juice that forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding enough water for juice. The fruit needs enough liquid to form a sauce while baking; without it the filling can dry out and scorch. Checking the juice level and adding a little extra sauce if needed keeps the roll moist.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes