Home › The Principles of Cookery › Swiss Roll
Swiss Roll
Break five eggs, separating the yolks from the whites; beat the yolks, and dredge in six ounces of pounded sugar and three ounces of flour, beating all the time. Whisk the whites of the eggs to as stiff a froth as possible, and stir them gently into the mixture. Butter a small baking-tin, and pour the mixture in; it should be about a quarter of an inch thick. Set it in a moderate oven, and bake for six or seven minutes. As soon as slightly firm take it out; spread apricot, raspberry, or greengage jam quickly over it; roll it up; replace it in the oven, and bake another five or six minutes; sift sugar on, and set it aside to cool. Probable cost, 1s.
A plain fatless sponge, baked thin and rolled hot. Everything depends on speed once it leaves the oven.
- The hinge: roll it hotA fatless sponge is only pliable while warm and steaming. Have the jam already warmed and loosened, spread and roll within a minute or two of the tin coming out, or the sheet will crack along the outside of the curve.
- Weights in cupsSix ounces of pounded sugar is roughly seven-eighths of a cup of caster or superfine sugar; three ounces of flour is about two-thirds of a cup of plain flour. "Pounded" simply means sugar crushed fine from the loaf, which is what caster sugar now supplies.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. For a sheet a quarter-inch thick, many modern recipes go hotter, 400 to 425F, so the sponge sets in the six or seven minutes given without drying out.
- The tinA "small baking-tin" here is a shallow sheet, roughly 9 by 13 inches for this quantity of batter. Butter it and line the base with parchment; the sponge will otherwise weld itself to the metal.
- The second bakingReturning the rolled cake to the oven for another five or six minutes was meant to set the shape. It tends to dry the crumb and open cracks. Rolling the hot sponge inside a sugared cloth or sheet of paper and leaving it to cool in that shape achieves the same thing.
- Folding in the whitesBeat the yolks with the sugar until pale and thick, sift the flour over rather than dredging it in blind, and fold the stiff whites in with a large spoon or spatula. Stirred, as written, the foam collapses and the sheet bakes tough.
- Greengage jamA firm-set plum preserve, still sold in Britain but scarce elsewhere. Any thick, well-set jam works; a loose or runny one soaks into the sponge and makes the roll soggy.
- YieldOne roll, cutting into eight to ten slices. The "probable cost, 1s." is a late Victorian shilling, a note the book gives for household budgeting.
Rolled sponges of this kind spread across European baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the English name "Swiss roll" is generally traced to that period rather than to any documented Swiss original; German-speaking bakers call the same thing a Biskuitroulade, and in France it becomes the gateau roule. What makes it a nineteenth-century dish is the sponge itself: a batter leavened by nothing but whipped egg, which only became a reliable domestic proposition once wire whisks, fine sifted flour and even-heated closed ranges were common in middle-class kitchens. The lesson it teaches is a general one rather than a single sweet, namely that a fatless sponge is worked fast, baked briefly and shaped while it is still hot.