Skip to main content
Dessert

Raisin Roll

A sweet roll made with raisins, lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar, steamed after rolling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, butter, and salt.

  2. Add milk gradually until the mixture is soft enough to roll out.

Fill, roll and steam

  1. Spread the dough with a mixture of raisins, lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar.

  2. Roll it up and steam for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 gluten network that gives the dough its structure so it can be rolled and hold its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the roll rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives it a richer texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture, and become soft and chewy as they steam.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it stay moist during steaming.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough. The dough must be soft but not sticky. If it is too stiff it will crack when rolled, and if it is too wet it will tear and smear the filling. Gluten develops as it is worked, so the dough should be handled gently once it is ready to roll.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, raisin, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, raisin, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes