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Dessert

Strawberry Roly-poly

A rolled cake made with strawberries, dusted with sugar and flour, steamed until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Strawberry Roly-poly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar together.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Beat the eggs until creamy, then add the milk and mix well.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients thoroughly.

Shape and filling

  1. Turn the mixture onto a well-floured board and roll into a sheet ½ inch thick.

  2. Spread the sheet with strawberries and dust with equal parts sugar and flour.

  3. Roll the sheet like a jelly roll and wrap it in a napkin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve hot with strawberry sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and adds richness.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and forms a soft dough.
Strawberries
Provide fruity flavour and moisture in the filling.

The step that matters

Roll the sheet like a jelly roll and wrap it in a napkin.. The roll must be wrapped snugly and evenly so it holds its shape and cooks through during steaming. A loose or uneven roll can open up, letting the filling spill out.

“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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