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Roll Jelly Cake
Take one cupful of white sugar, one-half teacupful of sweet milk, two eggs, one cupful of flour, two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, one-fourth of a teaspoonful saleratus, a pinch of salt, and such flavoring as you like. This will make two cakes in a square tin. Have the oven ready, put the cakes in, and while they are baking, get a cloth and the jelly ready on the table. As soon as they are baked, take them out and turn them one at a time on the cloth, spread quickly with jelly or marmalade, and roll up tightly in the cloth and lay them where they will cool. Handle them carefully or they may fall. Cut them with a sharp knife in slices.
A thin sponge sheet leavened with cream of tartar and soda, baked fast and rolled hot. The whole thing succeeds or fails in the ninety seconds after it leaves the oven.
- Roll it hotThe sheet must be turned out and rolled while it is still hot; a cake left to cool flat is likely to crack along the folds. Have the cloth and the jelly ready on the table while the cakes bake, as the recipe directs.
- SaleratusSaleratus was an early leavening, potassium bicarbonate at first and by the later nineteenth century often sodium bicarbonate. Modern baking soda substitutes measure for measure at this quantity. With cream of tartar it forms a working baking powder; a quarter-teaspoon of soda corresponds to roughly a teaspoon of modern baking powder.
- The teacupfulA teacup was smaller than a standard cup and varied from house to house, somewhere around 4 to 6 fluid ounces. Half of one is therefore about 2 to 3 fluid ounces, say 1/4 to 1/3 cup of milk. Start at 1/4 cup: the batter should pour thickly, not run.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the cook was left to judge the oven herself. For a sheet this thin, something like 400F for 7 to 10 minutes suits a modern oven. The cake is done when the surface springs back and the edges just pull from the tin; overbaked, it will not bend.
- The tin"Two cakes in a square tin" means two thin sheets baked in succession, or in two pans. A modern quarter-sheet or jelly-roll pan lined with parchment gives the same result and releases cleanly.
- The clothDust the cloth generously with sugar before turning the cake onto it, or the sponge will glue itself to the linen. A clean, smooth tea towel is what is wanted, not terry.
- Beating the eggsThe recipe skips this, but the lift is helped by it. Beat the eggs with the sugar until pale and thick enough to ribbon, then fold in the flour and milk; the small quantity of chemical leavening is unlikely to carry the sheet on its own.
- The jellyStir the jelly smooth, and warm it slightly if it is stiff. Spreading cold set jelly on hot sponge tears the surface. Leave a half-inch bare margin at the far edge so it does not squeeze out.
- YieldTwo rolls, each cutting into six to eight slices. They keep a day wrapped; after that the sponge dries.
Rolled jelly cake belongs to the great age of chemically leavened American baking, when cream of tartar and saleratus let a household turn out a sponge quickly. Recipes of this shape appear in receipt books from the mid-nineteenth century onward under the name jelly roll, and they earned their place because they used no butter, little milk and whatever preserve was on the shelf, which in a home that had put up currant or quince jelly in autumn meant cake from the pantry in February. The instruction to have the cloth and jelly waiting on the table might be read as suggesting a wood or coal range whose heat could not be dialled down, a cook standing at it, and no margin for hesitation once the pan came out.