Jelly Roll
1/2 cup cold water. 3 eggs 1½ cups sugar 2 cups flour Juice of 1/2 lemon 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking powder Beat the yolks with the sugar; add the liquid and sifted dry ingredients alternately; fold in the beaten whites and pour into shallow buttered tins, using only enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan. Bake about twelve minutes in a moderate oven; turn out on a paper well dusted with powdered sugar; cut off a thin strip from the sides and ends of the cake; spread with jelly and quickly roll. After the cake has been rolled wrap paper around it so that it will keep its shape.
A plain sponge roll of the sort that turned up in every early twentieth-century cake chapter. The recipe as printed is terse and slightly garbled at both ends, so read the notes before you start.
- The missing liquidThe method says to add "the liquid" alternately with the dry ingredients, but the only liquid listed is the juice of half a lemon. Two cups of flour cannot be moistened by three eggs and a spoonful of juice, so an ingredient line has probably dropped out. Treat the quantity as unknown rather than guessing blind.
- The stray last line"Yolks of 4 eggs, 1 cup sugar" at the end does not belong to this recipe; it appears to be the opening of another. Ignore it.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 350-375F. Twelve minutes is right for a sheet baked thin; the cake is done when it springs back and the edges just begin to shrink from the pan.
- Shallow tinsAny shallow rectangular pan, buttered as directed (parchment underneath makes turning out easier). "Only enough batter to cover the bottom" means about a quarter inch, no more, or it will crack when rolled.
- The hinge: roll it hotThe cake must come out of the pan, be trimmed, spread and rolled within a minute or two. Sponge sets as it cools and a cooled sheet splits along the outer curve. If the jelly is stiff, beat it smooth before the cake goes in the oven.
- Trimming the edgesThe crisp rim that forms at the sides and ends will not bend. Cutting off a thin strip all round, as directed, is what keeps the roll from tearing.
- Powdered sugar and paperConfectioners' sugar dusted on a clean towel or sheet of paper. Rolling the finished cake in that paper and leaving it seam-side down until cool sets the shape.
- YieldOne roll, cutting into about 10 to 12 slices.
The jelly roll belongs to a family of thin rolled sponges that spread through nineteenth-century English and American cookery under names such as "Swiss roll" and "jelly cake" — names that were used loosely and often interchangeably in print. Its logic is chemical as much as culinary: a batter leavened largely by beaten eggs bakes thin and fast, stays flexible while warm, and needs no fat to keep it pliable, which is why the recipe carries no butter at all. In Mrs. Fryer's book, both beaten egg and baking powder are used, the powder as insurance.