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Dessert

Lawn-tennis Cake

A fruit cake with almond icing, water icing, pistachios, and a tennis net made of royal icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Lawn-tennis Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Clean the currants and sultanas, and chop the mixed peel.

  4. Stir the sieved flour and baking powder into the mixture.

  5. Add the fruit and mix thoroughly.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into a square cake tin.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for three hours.

  3. Once done, place the cake on a sieve to cool.

Ice and decorate

  1. Coat the top with a thick layer of almond icing, leveling it out.

  2. Cover with vanilla-flavored water icing, and when nearly set, sprinkle with finely chopped pistachio nuts.

  3. Prepare a tennis net from royal icing and place it on the cake, adding two royal icing tennis rackets on each side.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

  5. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking the batter for three hours at 350°F. A dense, fruit-filled batter needs a long, moderate bake so the centre sets fully before the outside over-browns. Underbaking leaves a gummy middle, while excessive heat can scorch the surface.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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