Jelly Roll
3 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt ½ tablespoon milk 1 cup flour 1 tablespoon melted butter Beat egg until light, add sugar gradually, milk, flour mixed and sifted with baking powder and salt, then butter .
Line the bottom of a dripping-pan with paper; butter paper and sides of pan. Cover bottom of pan with mixture, and spread evenly. Bake twelve minutes in a moderate oven .
Take from oven and turn on a paper sprinkled with powdered sugar. Quickly remove paper, and cut off a thin strip from sides and ends of cake. Spread with jelly or jam which has been beaten to consistency to spread easily, and roll. After cake has been rolled, roll paper around cake that it may better keep in shape. The work must be done quickly, or cake will crack in rolling.
A plain sponge baked thin and rolled while hot. Nothing about it is difficult, but the whole recipe turns on speed once the cake leaves the oven.
- Roll it hotThe cake must be turned out, trimmed, filled and rolled while still steaming. A sponge that has cooled even a few minutes has set, and it will crack along the outside of every curve.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Twelve minutes suits a sheet about 10 by 15 inches; the cake should spring back when pressed and be barely coloured. Overbaking is the other common cause of cracking.
- Dripping-panThis means a shallow rectangular roasting or baking pan. A modern half-sheet pan (13 by 18 inches) gives a thinner, drier cake; a jelly-roll pan of 10 by 15 inches is the closer match.
- PaperThe original used plain kitchen paper, buttered. Parchment needs no buttering and lifts away cleanly, which matters when you have thirty seconds to work.
- SaltThe quantity as printed has lost its fraction. A quarter teaspoon suits this batter.
- Beating the eggsAll three eggs go in together, whole, and should be beaten until thick and light before the sugar is added gradually. The egg foam does much of the lifting, but the teaspoon of baking powder to a cup of flour is doing real work as well.
- The jellyBeat or warm it slightly so it spreads without tearing the crumb, and use it sparingly. Too much filling squeezes out of the ends and glues the roll shut before you finish.
- YieldOne roll, about ten slices. It is best the day it is made and stales quickly once cut.
The rolled sponge appears in American cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century, and its rise tracks the spread of reliable ovens and commercial baking powder into ordinary kitchens. Fannie Farmer's version is stripped to essentials: three eggs, a cup each of sugar and flour, and a spoonful of milk and butter for tenderness. The instruction to line the pan with buttered paper was standard practice in an era before nonstick surfaces, and the closing warning that the work must be done quickly is the sort of practical note that made the Boston Cooking-School book useful to cooks working without a teacher at their elbow.