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Dessert

Swiss Roll

A rolled sponge cake filled with jam and coated in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 950 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Swiss Roll

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift and warm the flour.

  2. Beat the butter with the eggs for 20 minutes.

  3. Flavor with vanilla essence and stir in the flour lightly.

  4. Spread the mixture in a buttered baking dish.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. Divide the pastry into strips and spread each with jam.

  3. Roll up the strips quickly, dredge with sugar, and let cool.

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. Vanilla + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 trap air and provide structure and lift as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set into the sponge's structure when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness, richness and flavor in the sponge.
Raspberry or apricot jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor and moisture inside the rolled sponge.

The step that matters

Roll up the strips quickly. The baked sponge is pliable only while warm. If it cools before rolling, it becomes brittle and cracks, so the strips need to be spread with jam and rolled without delay.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, vanilla, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, vanilla, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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