Swiss Roll
Having made the jelly-roll sheet as above, spread it with fruit jelly or jam, roll up, then brush over with sweetened water well flavored with lemon and roll it over in plenty of powdered sugar spread on a sheet of paper, then set it where the sugar coating will dry.
A finishing method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you have already baked the thin sponge sheet given earlier in the book, and tells you how to turn it into a sugar-crusted Swiss roll. The instructions that matter are about temperature and timing at the rolling stage.
- Roll it warmThe hinge of the whole thing. A thin sponge sheet cracks once it cools and sets, so turn it out onto a sugared cloth or paper within a minute or two of leaving the oven, spread and roll while it is still flexible. If it must wait, roll it up empty in the cloth, let it cool in that shape, then unroll, fill and re-roll.
- The jelly-roll sheetBaked thin in a shallow pan lined with paper, in a hot oven and only long enough to set: it should spring back but take almost no colour. The book gives no temperature, time or thickness here. An overbaked sheet is the usual reason a roll splits.
- Warm the jamCold jelly or preserve drags at the surface of a hot sponge and tears it. Beat or gently warm the jam so it spreads thinly and evenly, and keep it off the far inch of the sheet or it will squeeze out as you roll.
- "Sweetened water well flavored with lemon"A light glaze, not a syrup: roughly a tablespoon of sugar dissolved in a quarter cup of water with the juice and a little grated zest of a lemon. It is there to make the sugar coating stick and to give an acid note against the jam. Brush it on sparingly — a soaked exterior will turn the crust sticky rather than dry.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term generally meant sugar milled finer than granulated, not the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold today. Modern confectioners' sugar works well here, and its cornstarch helps the coating set matte rather than dissolving into the damp glaze.
- Setting the coating"Set it where the sugar coating will dry" means a warm, dry, draught-free spot, such as the back of a stove in a nineteenth-century kitchen. A warm dry place will do the same job; leave it uncovered until the surface is dry to the touch. Do not refrigerate it during this stage; condensation will melt the crust.
- Yield and servingSlice with a serrated knife; the yield depends on the size of the sheet, which the recipe does not state. Best the day it is made; wrapped, it keeps a second day but the sugar crust softens.
Swiss roll is chiefly British usage; American books more often say jelly roll, as Whitehead's own reference to the "jelly-roll sheet" shows. The name has no documented Swiss origin, and is often explained as nineteenth-century shorthand for something foreign and fine, in the same spirit as "Vienna bread" or "French rolls" on period menus. What distinguishes it here from the plain jelly roll is the finish: the lemon wash and dried sugar coating, which gave a counter item a crisp, sealed exterior. Jessup Whitehead wrote for working hotel and restaurant cooks rather than housewives, which is why the entry begins mid-process, assuming the sponge sheet is already made.