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Dessert

Roll Jelly Cake

A cake made with sour milk, butter, egg, molasses, baking soda, allspice, sugar, flour, and egg whites, baked and rolled with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Roll 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. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add sour milk, egg, molasses, baking soda, and allspice.

  3. Mix well. Gradually add flour. Mix until smooth.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake in a shallow pan at 350°F (175°C) until golden and cooked through.

  2. Once cool, spread with jelly.

  3. Roll the cake up.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + allspicetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the batter a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Roll the cake up. The cake must be cool before rolling, as stated in the record, otherwise it may crack. Rolling it cool helps it keep its shape once filled with jelly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, molasses, sugar, flour. 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.

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