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Dessert

Rolled Jelly Cake

A rolled cake made from a batter of eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and boiling water, topped with acid jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Rolled 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  3. In a bowl, combine the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Mix in the beaten egg yolks, then add the boiling water last.

  5. Spread the batter thinly in a large roasting pan.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake for 10 minutes until done.

  2. While still hot, spread with acid jelly and roll carefully from one side.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the batter and give the sponge its airy structure.
Flour
Its proteins form the gluten network that gives the cake structure and holds it together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the thin batter rise and stay light.
Acid jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness and moisture to the filling inside the rolled cake.

The step that matters

Rolling while hot. The cake must be rolled while still warm and flexible, because cooled sponge becomes brittle and cracks when rolled. Rolling gently keeps the spread jelly even and the roll intact.

“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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