Skip to main content
Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A cake made from a batter baked in tins, then spread with jelly and rolled up.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Rolled Jelly Cake

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, combine sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Break in the eggs and mix everything well.

Bake and roll

  1. Pour the batter into prepared tins and bake until light brown.

  2. Once baked, turn the cake out onto a clean surface.

  3. Spread jelly evenly over the cake, then roll it up carefully.

  4. Wrap the rolled cake in a clean napkin.

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).

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.
Sugar
Sweetens the sponge and helps it brown during baking.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the sponge together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and stay tender.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and moisture to the filling inside the rolled sponge.

The step that matters

Rolling the warm cake. Rolling the cake too late lets it cool and stiffen, causing cracks. Turning it out and rolling while still warm, with the jelly spread evenly, keeps the sponge flexible enough to curl without breaking.

“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.

You might also like

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