Swiss roll and roulade are both spirally rolled dishes having sweet taste and sweet or salty taste respectively. Both the dishes are quite different in their ways but are loved by people around the different parts of the world.
Both roulade and swiss roll have different fillings in them.
Key Takeaways
- Roulades are rolled, filled dishes that can be sweet or savory, made from various ingredients like sponge cake, meat, or vegetables, while Swiss rolls are a specific type of sweet roulade, made from a thin sponge cake and filled with whipped cream, jam, or frosting.
- Roulades originated in European cuisine, with French, German, and Hungarian cooking variations. In contrast, Swiss rolls are believed to have originated in Central Europe, despite the name suggesting a Swiss origin.
- Both roulades and Swiss rolls are known for their spiral presentation and require careful preparation to prevent the roll from breaking or cracking.
Roulade vs Swiss Roll
A roulade is a rolled dish made with a thin sheet of meat, beef or chicken, while a Swiss roll is a rolled sponge cake filled with cream or jam. Roulade is a savory dish, while Swiss roll is a sweet dessert. Although rolled in a similar way, they differ in their ingredients and purpose.
A roulade is a roll in a spiral form that tastes spicy or sweet respectively due to the filling of meat or pastry in it.
It could also have a piece of fish, flesh, beef, steak, or sponges in it to make it taste tangy. It has a European background.
Swiss roll, with a European background, is an example of a roulade that tastes sweet. A swiss roll is also a spirally arranged roll that has a cake or a pastry filling in it.
Besides these, it is filled with jam, cream, sweet sponges, etc based on its serving.
Comparison Table
| Parameters of Comparison | Roulade | Swiss Roll |
|---|---|---|
| Filling | A roulade is filled with either cake or a non-vegetarian piece. | A swiss roll is filled with a cake or a pastry with jam, cream, etc. |
| Taste | Roulades can taste sweet or savory as per the filling in them. | Swiss rolls taste sweet due to cake, cream, jam, etc. |
| Stuffing | Roulades are stuffed with cakes, pastries, chicken pieces, steaks, fish, or tangy sponges. | A swiss roll has no tangy stuffings. It is either rolled with a cake or a pastry with whipped creams. |
| More ingredients | Other than sweet roulades, they come with onion, vegetable stuffing, and salad to eat with. | Swiss rolls have no other ingredients like salad, veggies, etc but can have chocolates or sweet stuff. |
| Often consumption | We can have tangy roulades during lunch or dinner as food and sweet roulades as a sweet after food. | People have swiss rolls as sweets for snacks and after food hours. |
What is Roulade?
Roulade originated from European cuisine and has a french meaning ‘to roll’. Roulades can either be sweet or tangy based on the fillings in them.
They are available in varying sizes and flavors all around the world. As a general class of food, we name them as roulades. A sweet roulade comes after food to enjoy as a sweet snack.
Sweet roulades have a spiral rolling as a cake or a pastry. They are served in several flavors with different content in them based on the local food tradition like strawberry, blueberry, chocolate, etc.
The other type of roulades includes savory or crisp and tangy roulade dishes. They are eaten as general food and include pieces of chicken, thin steak sheets, flesh, fish, or pork sponges rolled as a spiral covering.
They are offered with salad, onions, and real veggies to enhance their taste. Roulades can be sweet as well as spicy in any content and have variable sizes and ingredients used in them.
People confuse sweet roulade with a swiss roll as both of them look the same in certain cases, but a spicy roulade looks a lot like meat or sizzling chicken in appearance.
What is Swiss Roll?
A Swiss roll is a sweet roulade. It also originated from European cuisine and comes in a background of sweet dishes.
Swiss rolls have a spiral covering, cylindrical, in the form of a roll and are filled in with pieces of cake or pastry to give it a sweet taste and appearance.
They also use other ingredients like chocolate sauce, beads of choco, and other sweet belongings like whipped creamy texture and multi-flavored jams that people can have with a swiss roll.
A swiss roll sounds a lot like it has Switzerland as its country of origin, but it originated from central European countries like Austria. Besides the filling and stuffing in them, swiss rolls also come in varying sizes and flavors.
They can also have strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, etc in their flavors. However, swiss rolls have a different market.
People have swiss rolls after their food in lunch or dinners and children eat swiss rolls as snacks often.
The outer covering of a swiss roll is made with cake or spongy pastries and the inner layers have spread of jams or whipped creams with an icing texture. They are soft and less subtle depending upon their flavors.
Main Differences Between Roulade and Swiss Roll
- Roulades are of two main kinds having a sweet and savory taste. On the other hand, the swiss roll is just one kind and offers sweetness only.
- All roulades are not swiss rolls. On the other hand, swiss rolls come in the class of roulades.
- Roulades, savory ones, are not soft and are more subtle. On the other hand, a swiss roll is soft and has a squash texture.
- A roulade, savory one, is not easy to make. On the other hand, swiss rolls can be made very easily.
- Roulades can also have bread in them. On the other hand, a swiss roll is always a flat cake that is rolled.
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02652038709373647
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1256886/
Last Updated : 18 July, 2023
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Sandeep Bhandari holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computers from Thapar University (2006). He has 20 years of experience in the technology field. He has a keen interest in various technical fields, including database systems, computer networks, and programming. You can read more about him on his bio page.
