Paris Roll
When the jelly roll is made, spread red currant jelly thinly all over the outside, then roll it in grated or desiccated cocoanut, enough to coat it over. Some powdered sugar should be mixed with the cocoanut and then, if the roll be allowed to dry off, it will not be so liable to be sticky as the jelly and cocoanut alone will make it.
This is a finishing treatment rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have a baked and filled jelly roll on the board. The only real skill is getting the jelly thin enough to grip the coconut without soaking the sponge.
- The hingeWarm the currant jelly and beat or strain it smooth before spreading, then apply the thinnest possible film. Cold jelly straight from the jar drags at the sponge surface and can tear it, and too thick a coat will eventually weep through the coconut.
- The roll itselfThe recipe assumes a jelly roll already baked, filled and rolled; it gives no pan size, baking time or oven heat. Trim the ends square before glazing so the spiral shows.
- CocoanutOld spelling of coconut. "Desiccated" here means the dry, finely shredded unsweetened kind still sold as desiccated coconut; modern sweetened flaked coconut is moist and much coarser, and will slide off in sheets rather than coating evenly.
- Powdered sugarThe recipe says only 'some'; a modest proportion of powdered (confectioners') sugar to coconut, on the order of one part to four, keeps the mixture free-running. It absorbs surface moisture from the jelly, which is the drying effect the text describes.
- Rolling techniqueSpread the coconut mixture in a deep tray and roll the cake through it, pressing gently with a clean towel or your palms to make it adhere. Coat the ends as well, or the exposed jelly there stays tacky.
- Drying offLeave the finished roll uncovered in a cool, dry place until the surface is no longer tacky, as the text directs. Refrigeration is not the way to dry it; a cold, humid box does the coating no favours.
- Red currant jellyA firm-set, tart, high-pectin jelly with a clean red colour, long used as a glaze in pastry work. Redcurrant jelly is still widely sold; a stiff seedless raspberry or apple jelly behaves similarly, but softer jams will not set to a dry surface.
- YieldThe recipe gives no size or yield. Slice with a serrated knife wiped between cuts, and eat it fresh; the coconut coating does not keep well.
Coating a plain jelly roll in jelly and coconut was a cheap way to turn the same sheet of sponge into something more showy, and rolls of this kind were finished in several different ways. Names of this sort were largely commercial decoration; 'Paris' attached to a cake in this period seems to have signalled fashionable French confectionery rather than any documented Parisian origin, and other Paris-named items such as Paris buns turn up in trade books of the era. Desiccated coconut was being produced commercially and appearing regularly in American and English recipe books by the closing decades of the nineteenth century, which is why the recipe can treat it as an ordinary stock item.