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Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A light cake rolled with jelly, baked in shallow tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Add the sugar and mix well.

  4. Stir in the water and salt.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixed with baking powder.

  6. Pour the batter into well-greased shallow biscuit tins.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Turn the cake out onto a damp towel on a breadboard.

  3. Spread jelly over the top and roll up while warm.

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 trap air and give the cake its light, sponge-like structure.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that sets the cake's crumb once baked.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the thin sponge rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Roll up while warm. Warm sponge is flexible, so it can be rolled without cracking. Once it cools, the cake stiffens and splits along the spiral.

“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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