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Dessert

Lawn Tennis Cakes

A buttery cake with currants, mixed peel, and nutmeg, iced with almond and water icing and garnished with pistachio kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lawn Tennis Cakes

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition to prevent curdling.

  3. If the mixture curdles, add a handful of flour and continue beating.

  4. Once combined, gently fold in the plain flour until just mixed.

  5. Fill round papered rings with about 18 oz of batter each.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. The next day, remove the paper and ice with almond icing.

  3. Follow with a layer of water icing and sprinkle with finely-chopped pistachio kernels.

  4. For small cakes, pipe a border with cake icing and trace a tennis court outline on top.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Plain flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Castor sugar
Creams with butter to hold air and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding eggs one at a time and beating well between additions keeps the fat and egg emulsified. If the batter curdles, the cake can turn dense and greasy, so a spoonful of flour helps re-bind it.

Swap the currant

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

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

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