Skip to main content
Dessert

Roll Jelly Cake

A baked cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and cold water, rolled with jelly.

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 ↓

Roll 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  3. Add sugar, cold water, and salt; mix until combined.

  4. In another bowl, combine flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, stirring until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

  2. Spread jelly over the warm 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. 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. Egg + sugartop 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

Eggs
Whisked eggs trap air and provide structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the sponge its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Rolling the warm cake. Rolling while the cake is still warm keeps it flexible so it bends without cracking. Once it cools, the sponge stiffens and tears, so the roll must be shaped promptly and gently.

“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