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Sponge Cake Roll
6 eggs. 1 1/2 teacups flour. 1 teacup powdered sugar. Rind and juice of a lemon.
Beat the eggs separately and very light. Do not beat the batter much after adding the flour, which must be done last of all. Get a square baking-pan, butter it, and pour one-half the batter in, reserving the rest for a second layer. Have ready a nice damp towel, lay the cake on it when taken out of the pan; spread over the cake, jam or currant jelly; roll it up whilst damp, and when firmly set put it in a place to dry. It is good eaten with sauce, when for a dinner dish, or it can be cut in slices and eaten as small cakes.--Mrs.
A thin sponge sheet rolled around jam, from a book that assumes you know your own oven. The instructions omit heat and time entirely, so those are the two things to supply.
- The teacupA 19th-century teacup is roughly 3/4 cup, though usage varied and some books treat it as a full cup. Taking it as 3/4 cup gives about 1 1/8 cups flour to 3/4 cup sugar for six eggs, which is a sound sponge ratio; if you scale up to full cups the batter will be stiff and the sheet will crack when rolled.
- Powdered sugarIn 1878 this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-laced confectioners' sugar sold now. Use superfine or caster sugar, or pulse granulated in a blender.
- Oven heatNone is given. A thin sponge sheet wants a fairly quick oven, 375-400F, for 8-12 minutes: long enough to set, short enough that the surface stays flexible. An overbaked sheet is the usual reason a roll splits.
- Pan and quantityHalf the batter in a "square baking-pan" means a thin layer. In place of the square pan, a 10x15-inch rimmed sheet, buttered and lined with parchment, takes half this batter at roughly 1/4 inch deep. Since the second half is set aside for "a second layer," the batch appears to yield two sheets, and so two rolls.
- Roll it warm, not dampThe hinge of the whole thing. Turn the sheet out onto the damp towel the moment it leaves the oven, spread the jelly, and roll immediately. Sponge loses its flexibility as it cools and sets; a cooled sheet cracks along the outside of the curve.
- Beating the eggs separatelyWhites to soft-firm peaks, yolks beaten pale with the sugar and lemon, then folded together with the flour sifted over in two or three additions. "Do not beat the batter much after adding the flour" is the whole leavening strategy here, since there is no baking powder.
- Warm the jellyCurrant jelly straight from the jar tears a hot sponge. Stir it loose over low heat or beat it smooth first so it spreads in one pass.
- "A place to dry"Probably a cool, dry larder or pantry, where the roll firmed up and the surface dried slightly; the text does not say. Wrap it in the towel or in parchment and leave it seam-side down at room temperature for an hour; refrigeration makes sponge firm but also stale-tasting.
- ServingEach roll cuts into roughly 8-10 slices. The "sauce" for a dinner dish would have been a wine or lemon sauce served warm over the slice, or a hard sauce served cold.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, drew its contents from some 250 named contributors, and entries are routinely signed with the contributor's name; the truncated "--Mrs." here is an artefact of the text as transcribed rather than anything that can be pinned on the original printer. The jelly-filled sponge roll appears in American and British cookbooks from the middle of the century onward, under names including jelly cake, jelly roll and later Swiss roll; the technique depended on nothing more than eggs beaten by hand and a hot oven, since a sponge of this kind needs no chemical leavening at all. The instruction to roll the cake in a damp towel and then set it aside "to dry" belongs to a house with a cool pantry rather than an icebox, and the note that it serves either as a dinner sweet with sauce or sliced into small cakes for tea shows a cook getting two occasions out of one baking.