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 ↓
Jelly Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the batter
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Beat the eggs well in a bowl.
Add the sugar and flour, and stir until combined.
Mix in the cream of tartar and baking soda.
Pour the batter into a baking pan and bake until golden.
Roll and serve
Remove from the oven and spread jelly over the hot cake.
Roll the cake up while it's still warm.
Once cooled, cut the ends to serve.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Provide structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
- White sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter and helps stabilise the rise with the baking soda.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lightens the cake.
- Jelly
- Adds moisture and sweet flavour to the filling inside the rolled cake.
The step that matters
Rolling the cake while warm. Rolling while the cake is still warm keeps it pliable so it bends without cracking. Once cooled, the sponge stiffens and tends to split, so the roll should happen promptly after the jelly is spread.
“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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