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Dessert

Chocolate Roll

A rolled cake made from a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, and vanilla, filled with a chocolate custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Roll

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 cake

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the yolks and beat thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the sugar, flour, cold water, baking powder, and vanilla.

  4. Spread the batter in thin layers on a baking sheet and bake until lightly golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, cook the chocolate, water, corn starch, and sugar in a saucepan until it thickens like custard.

  2. Spread the filling over the cake while it is still hot.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites trap air, giving the thin sponge its light, rolled structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the batter into a sturdy, flexible cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise and stay airy in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist as it bakes.
Corn starch
Thickens the chocolate mixture into a custard-like filling as it heats.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff before adding the yolks. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the thin sponge. If they are underbeaten or deflated when the yolks and dry ingredients go in, the batter will bake flat and may crack when rolled.

“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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