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Dessert

Chocolate Roll

A rolled cake with chocolate filling made from eggs, sugar, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, grated chocolate, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Roll

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 the cake

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

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until very light and fluffy.

  3. Gently fold in the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a long pan and bake until golden.

Make the filling and roll

  1. In a saucepan, combine the grated chocolate, sugar, and a little water; boil for a few minutes.

  2. Spread the chocolate filling on the baked cake and roll it up quickly.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Whipped with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that stabilises the whipped egg foam and helps the leavening react.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam.
Grated chocolate
Gives the filling its chocolate flavour and thickens it when boiled with sugar and water.

The step that matters

Rolling the cake while warm. The baked sponge is flexible only while warm; if it cools it cracks when rolled. Rolling quickly after spreading the filling keeps it pliable and prevents breaks.

“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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