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Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A rolled cake made with a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, milk, lemon extract, topped with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and raspberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Rolled 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.

Prepare and bake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, milk, and lemon extract until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a long baking tin and bake until golden.

Fill and roll

  1. While the cake is warm, spread jelly or jam over the top.

  2. Place a clean towel on the table, lay the cake on it, and roll it up with the towel to prevent cracking.

  3. Do not remove the towel until the cake is completely 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. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 richness as they set during baking, holding the sponge together.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the sponge once baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.
Jelly or jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture to the filling inside the roll.

The step that matters

Rolling the warm cake with the towel. Rolling while the sponge is still warm and flexible lets it bend without cracking. Once cool, the set crumb is more brittle and tends to split, so the towel is kept in place until the cake has fully cooled to hold its shape.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, milk, lemon. 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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