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Dessert

Swiss Roll

A rolled cake made from eggs, flour, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Swiss Roll

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and measure their weight to determine the amounts of flour, butter, and sugar.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it with the sugar and eggs until smooth.

  4. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then add the milk and mix until combined.

Bake and roll

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking sheet and spread evenly.

  2. Bake for about 10‑15 minutes until golden.

  3. Spread jam over the baked cake and roll it up carefully.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs provide structure and trap air, giving the sponge its light, elastic body.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the sponge once baked, allowing it to be rolled.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and a soft crumb in the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning at the surface during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Rolling the baked cake. A cake that is over-baked loses moisture and becomes brittle, so it cracks when rolled. Roll it while still warm and flexible, as cooling makes it stiff.

“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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