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Dessert

Jelly Roll

A rolled cake made from a batter of eggs, sugar, flour, and butter, topped with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Jelly 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. 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 oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat eggs until fluffy.

  2. Add cream of tartar and sugar, mixing well.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in milk and add to mixture.

  4. Fold in flour, salt, and melted butter until combined.

  5. Pour batter onto greased baking sheet and spread evenly.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake for 12–15 minutes or until golden.

  2. Remove from oven, spread with jelly, and roll in clean towel.

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. Cream + sugartop 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 into foam, they give the sponge its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped eggs.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilising the foam and reacting with baking soda to aid rising.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Roll the cake while still warm. Rolling the cake while warm keeps it flexible, so it bends without cracking. As it cools the crumb stiffens and the rolled cake is more likely to split.

“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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