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 ↓
Jelly Rolls
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.
Bake and roll
Spread the batter in thin sheets on baking trays.
Bake until golden, then let cool.
Spread currant jelly on the cooled sheets and roll them up.
Alternatively, bake in round, thin cakes, layering three or four with jelly in between.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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 thin sheets together once baked.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour to the batter.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps the sheets brown as they bake.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the batter rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter and works with baking soda to help it rise.
The step that matters
Spread the batter in thin sheets. Thin layers bake quickly and evenly, so they turn golden and stay flexible enough to roll. Thick batter bakes unevenly and cracks or breaks when rolled.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, cream. 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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