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Rolled Jelly Cake
3 eggs. 1 teacup of sugar. 1 teacup of flour.
Beat the yolks of the eggs till light, then add the sugar; continue beating for some time, then add the whites beaten to a stiff froth; next put in the flour, a little at a time. Bake in a long pan, well greased; when done turn out on bread-board, then cover the top with jelly and roll while warm, and slice as needed.--Mrs. A. H.
Rolled Jelly Cake. 1 cupful sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 1/2 cupful of flour. 2/3 cupful of milk. 1 egg.
Two teaspoonfuls of baking powder sifted with the flour. Bake in a large sheet, and when done, spread on the jelly and cut the sheets in strips three or four inches wide and roll up. If instead of jelly a sauce is made and spread between the layers of cake, it may be eaten as a cream-pie and furnish a very nice dessert. For the sauce, beat together one egg, one teaspoonful of corn-starch, or one tablespoonful flour and two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Stir into a half-pint of milk and boil until it forms a good custard. Remove from the fire and flavor with vanilla.--Mrs. M.
Two recipes under one heading: Mrs. A. H.'s is a plain fatless sponge leavened only by beaten egg, Mrs. M.'s a butter-and-baking-powder sheet cake. Both are baked thin and rolled warm, and the rolling is where they succeed or fail.
- Roll it while genuinely warmA thin sheet cake sets as it cools and will crack along the outside of the curve. Turn it out, spread, and roll within a few minutes; if the jelly must wait, roll the bare cake in a clean towel first, let it cool curled, then unroll, fill and re-roll.
- Teacup and pan sizeA teacup in period books is usually reckoned smaller than a modern measuring cup, somewhere around 6 ounces, though this book does not say. For the sponge, 3 eggs with about 3/4 cup each sugar and flour is the classic ratio and works. Mrs. M.'s recipe says "cupful," which is probably nearer the full 8 ounces.
- "A long pan" / "a large sheet"Neither is defined. A rimmed sheet about 10 by 15 inches, with the batter spread roughly 1/4 to 3/8 inch deep, suits both. Grease and line with parchment; the sponge in particular tears if it sticks anywhere.
- Oven temperatureNeither cook gives one. Bake thin sheets hot and fast: 400F for 8 to 10 minutes, until the surface springs back and the edges just begin to pull from the pan. Longer drying makes the cake brittle and unrollable.
- Beating the spongeWith no baking powder, the volume is all in the eggs. Beat yolks and sugar until pale and ribbon-like, fold the stiff whites in gently, then sift the flour over in three additions and fold, not stir.
- Warm the jellyCold jelly straight from the jar drags and tears the crumb. Beat it smooth, or warm it briefly until it spreads like paint, and leave a half-inch border at the far edge so it does not squeeze out.
- The custard sauce"Boil until it forms a good custard" is period shorthand for cooking a cornstarch custard through; with the flour or cornstarch present it will tolerate a bare simmer, but pull it as soon as it thickens and coats a spoon. Overcooking curdles the egg and the vanilla goes flat if added over heat.
- Storing the cream-pie versionFilled with jelly, the roll keeps a couple of days at room temperature. Filled with the custard it is a dairy-and-egg dessert: refrigerate it and eat it within a day.
- YieldEither sheet gives one long roll of about 8 to 10 slices, or, if the sheet is cut into strips three or four inches wide as Mrs. M. directs, several smaller rolls.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials, is full of these paired recipes where two women send in the same dish made two different ways, and the editor prints both. The pairing here is a small snapshot of a change in American baking: Mrs. A. H.'s cake is the older kind, raised entirely by hand-beaten eggs, while Mrs. M.'s uses commercial baking powder, which had become widely available in the decades before this book appeared and let a cook get a tender sheet with a single egg and a spoonful of butter. "Jelly cake" in nineteenth-century American books usually meant thin layers stacked with jelly between them; the rolled form, later known simply as jelly roll, is the same idea turned into a spiral. Mrs. M.'s note that the sheet can be filled with boiled custard instead and "eaten as a cream-pie" shows how loosely the period used pie, cake and pudding as categories of serving rather than of construction.