Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Roll Jelly Cake
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light.
Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.
Make the batter
Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and add to the egg mixture.
Fold in the dry ingredients gently.
Pour the batter into an oblong tin and bake until golden.
Fill and roll
While hot, spread with jelly and roll the cake up.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provide structure and, when beaten, trap air that lifts the batter.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps the beaten eggs hold their foam.
- Flour
- Sets during baking to give the cake its structure.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the egg foam.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
The step that matters
Rolling while hot. A warm sponge is flexible, so it can be rolled without cracking. Once it cools, the starch and protein set and the cake becomes brittle and splits along the roll.
“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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