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Dessert

Tennis Cake

A butter cake flavored with lemon and dried cherries, topped with almond and lemon icing and decorated with tennis motifs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and castor sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then fold into the mixture.

  5. Stir in the citron peel, grated lemon rind, dried cherries, and angelica.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes.

Ice and decorate

  1. Once cooled, cover the cake with almond icing, then with lemon-flavored icing.

  2. Use an icing tube to divide the top into two sections.

  3. On one half, create a net design; on the other half, make tennis rackets and balls.

  4. Decorate the edge with roses and color the icing pink if desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Angelica + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift as they are beaten into the creamed butter and sugar.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Castor sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and add sweetness and gentle browning.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise.
Dried cherries
Add moisture and concentrated fruity sweetness throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating the butter and sugar until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven, so the cake rises and stays light. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake.

Swap the angelica

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, lemon, almond. 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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