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Dessert

Jelly Roll

A rolled cake made from a sugar, flour, egg batter, topped with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Jelly Roll

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, and baking powder until well combined.

  3. Spread the batter evenly in a long, narrow baking tin.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. Turn the cake out onto a clean cloth.

  3. Spread currant jelly over the cake and roll it up tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and egg 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
Provide structure and lift, trapping air in the batter so the sponge stays light and rollable.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the sponge together once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while keeping the crumb tender.
Rumford baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and stay soft.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness, acidity and moisture to the filling inside the roll.

The step that matters

Turn the cake out onto a clean cloth. The cake must still be warm and pliable when turned out, because it cools and cracks if left too long before rolling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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