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 ↓
Kolled 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
Beat the eggs and powdered sugar together lightly.
Stir in the flour until the batter is light and thin enough to spread.
Prepare shallow tin pans (about 12 by 18 inches and 1 inch deep) by lining them with thin brown paper without grease.
Pour the batter into the pans, spreading it as thin as possible (about ½ inch thick).
Bake and roll
Bake in a solid oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.
Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.
While still warm, turn the cake out of the pan upside down.
Brush the paper with cold water and pull it off.
Spread the cake thinly with jelly and roll it up, securing the outer edge to prevent unrolling until cold.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.
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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Beaten eggs provide the light, airy structure that makes the thin sponge cake hold together.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps give the cake its fine, tender texture.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch and protein that set the batter into a thin, cohesive sponge.
The step that matters
Turn the cake out while still warm. A warm sponge is flexible, so it can be rolled without cracking. Once it cools, the cake stiffens and tears more easily when rolled around the jelly.
“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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