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Dessert

Roll Jelly Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, butter, and milk, rolled with jelly filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roll 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the flour, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it with the batter along with the milk.

Bake and roll

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.

  2. Let it cool, then roll it up with your favorite jelly filling.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main structure that holds the rolled cake together.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps stabilize the leavening for a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps whip the eggs to a light, fluffy foam.

The step that matters

Let it cool before rolling. A warm sponge is fragile and tears or cracks when rolled. Cooling lets the structure set so it can be rolled without breaking.

“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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