Skip to main content
Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A rolled cake made from a thin batter, topped with jelly and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. 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

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

  2. Beat the eggs and powdered sugar together lightly.

  3. Stir in the flour until the batter is light and thin enough to spread.

  4. Line a 12 by 18 inch pan with thin brown paper, without greasing it.

  5. Pour the batter into the pan, spreading it thinly, about ½ inch thick.

  6. Bake until done.

Cool and roll

  1. Let cool for a few minutes.

  2. Turn the cake out upside down onto a clean surface while still warm.

  3. Brush the paper with cold water.

  4. Remove the paper carefully.

  5. Spread jelly thinly over the cake.

  6. Roll it up tightly.

  7. Place the outer edge against something to keep it from unrolling until cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Slice.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Whipped with sugar, they trap air and give the thin cake its light structure.
Flour
Provides structure so the thin cake holds together when rolled.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the cake a tender texture.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and moisture, and fills the rolled cake.

The step that matters

Rolling the warm cake. The cake must be turned out and rolled while still warm, because warm sponge is flexible and cracks less. Once cool it becomes stiff and tears easily.

“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.

More jelly roll recipes

Cake 81 See all 122 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes