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Dessert

Swiss Roll or Baked Pancake

A sweet rolled cake made from a batter of powdered sugar, flour, and eggs, baked and rolled with jam.

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

Swiss Roll or Baked Pancake

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.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a dish with oiled paper and sift powdered sugar inside.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the powdered sugar with the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Add the flour and the stiffly beaten egg whites, and mix gently.

  3. Pour the batter into the dish and sift more sugar on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 7 minutes.

  2. Spread jam over the baked pancake, roll it up, and serve sliced, hot or cold.

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. Egg + flourtop 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).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff foam that traps air, giving the sponge its light, rising structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter into a smooth, tender sponge.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the baked sponge and hold its shape for rolling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sponge and helps create a fine, tender crumb with a delicate surface.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Mixing too vigorously knocks out the air trapped in the whites, so the sponge bakes flat and dense. Gentle folding keeps the batter light, which lets the roll rise and stay flexible enough to roll without cracking.

“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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