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Dessert

Tennis-cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, raisins, almonds, candied peel, lemon, eggs, and decorated with cherries, angelica, and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tennis-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pound the sugar until fine.

  3. Blanch and chop the almonds.

  4. Whisk the eggs in a bowl.

  5. Cut the candied peel into very thin slices.

  6. Beat the butter until creamy.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add the flour, sugar, raisins, almonds, candied peel, lemon rind, and juice to the butter, mixing well.

  2. Add the whisked eggs and beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Line a cake tin with buttered paper and pour in the batter.

Bake and decorate

  1. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

  2. Once baked, ice the cake with white icing.

  3. Before the icing sets, decorate with preserved cherries and angelica cut into leaf shapes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb when beaten until creamy.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture to the crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moist.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a bit of texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs into the batter for 10 minutes. Beating incorporates air and builds the batter's structure, which helps the cake rise and keeps the crumb light. Overbeating after the flour is in can make it tough, so mix until smooth and no longer.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, raisin, almond, lemon, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, almond, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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