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Dessert

Jam Roley Poley

A layered jelly dessert made with glucose, coconut, gelatin, and raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jam Roley Poley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Boil the glucose and water sharply until it reaches a stiff ball stage.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the gelatine; let it sit until scum rises, then skim it off.

Make the layers

  1. Mix the tartaric acid, carbonate of soda, and icing sugar together.

  2. Add this powder and the desiccated coconut to half of the mixture and stir until it foams.

  3. Pour this mixture into a tin, spreading it to about ½ inch thick.

  4. Color the other half bright red by adding raspberry jam and mix thoroughly.

  5. Pour the red mixture over the white layer, ensuring the red is cool to prevent disturbance.

Set and shape

  1. Let it cool and harden, then remove from the tin and roll each layer.

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. Coconut + raspberrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Glucose
Provides sweetness and a chewy, body-building structure as the syrup cools and sets.
Gelatine
Forms the gel that gives the poley its firm, elastic set.
Tartaric acid
Reacts with the carbonate of soda to release gas, creating the foamy, light texture.
Carbonate of soda
Releases carbon dioxide when combined with acid, causing the mixture to foam and rise.
Desiccated coconut
Adds texture and flavour to the white layer.
Raspberry jam
Adds fruit flavour and colour to the red layer.

The step that matters

Pour the red layer only when it is cool. Pouring hot red mixture onto the white layer can melt or disturb it, blurring the two layers and disrupting the foam structure before the mixture sets.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raspberry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raspberry. 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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