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Swiss Roll or Baked Pancake
Mix 1/2 pound powdered sugar with the yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light, add 1/4 pound of flour and the whites, beaten stiff. Line a dish with oiled paper, sift sugar thickly inside, pour in the batter, sift more sugar on top, and bake about 7 minutes in a hot oven. Spread it with jam, roll it up and serve, hot or cold, cut into slices.
A fatless whipped-egg sponge baked thin and rolled while still warm. Everything depends on speed: the batter goes straight from bowl to oven, and the sheet is rolled the moment it comes out.
- The hinge: roll it warmA fatless sponge cracks once it cools and sets. Turn the baked sheet out onto a sugared sheet of paper, peel off the lining, spread the jam at once and roll. If the jam is stiff, warm it first so it spreads without tearing the crumb.
- Weights into cupsHalf a pound of sugar is about 1 generous cup; a quarter pound of flour is a scant cup (115 g). The two-to-one sugar-to-flour ratio is what gives this its tender, slightly crisp surface, so weigh if you can.
- "Powdered sugar"In older books this generally means finely ground granulated sugar, close to what is now sold as caster or superfine. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and is likely to give a denser, chalkier sponge. Use caster sugar in the batter and for sifting over the tin.
- The dishThe recipe specifies no size; a shallow rectangular tin of something like 10 by 15 inches will let the batter lie about a quarter inch deep, and anything deeper will not roll. Oiled paper is the period equivalent of modern parchment; the sifted sugar underneath and on top forms the thin sugar crust that keeps the sponge from sticking.
- A hot oven425-450F. Seven minutes is right for a sheet this thin, and the sponge is done when it springs back and the edges just begin to shrink from the tin. Longer drying is the usual cause of a roll that splits.
- No leaveningThere is no baking powder here; the whipped eggs are the only lift. Beat the yolks and sugar until pale and ribboning, then fold the stiff whites in with a light hand and get the batter into the oven immediately.
- YieldOne sheet makes a roll of about 8 to 10 slices.
The Swiss roll is not Swiss in any traceable sense; the name appears in British kitchens in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the association with Switzerland is generally treated as a marketing flourish rather than a documented origin. The same cake goes by other national labels elsewhere, which is a fair sign that nobody is certain where it began. What is clear is the technique: a fatless whisked sponge, the same batter used for Savoy and sponge fingers, baked thin instead of deep. The alternative title here, "Baked Pancake," may reflect how such a thin sheet looked to cooks used to griddle work.