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 ↓
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs well.
Add the powdered sugar and flour, and stir until combined.
Dissolve the baking soda in water and add it along with the cream of tartar to the mixture.
Pour the batter evenly into 2 pie pans.
Bake and roll
Bake until done, then turn the cakes onto a towel, bottom side up.
Spread jelly evenly on the cakes, roll them up quickly, and wrap in the towel.
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
- Beaten eggs trap air and give the thin cake its light, airy structure.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter into a cake structure.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it bake up tender and fine-textured.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the beaten eggs, helping the cake hold its air.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and help the cake rise.
The step that matters
Roll the cakes quickly after turning them out. Warm sponge is pliable, but as it cools the starch sets and the structure stiffens, so it cracks if rolled late.
“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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