Skip to main content
Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A rolled cake with a jelly filling, made from sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, then mix in the milk and egg until smooth.

Bake and roll

  1. Pour the batter into a large sheet pan and bake until done.

  2. Spread jelly over the baked cake and cut into strips 3-4 inches wide.

  3. Roll up each strip to serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the light cake together once baked.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while tenderizing the crumb.
C. h. collins' paragon baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and stays light.

The step that matters

Bake until done in a large sheet pan. A thin, wide layer bakes quickly and can dry out or crack if overbaked. It must be fully set so it rolls without tearing, and the spread batter needs to cool enough to hold jelly.

“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