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Dessert

Tennis Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, sultanas, cherries, and almond icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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.

  2. Add the yolks of the eggs and whisk well.

  3. Fold in the halved Valencia raisins, quartered cherries, and sultanas.

  4. Sift in the flour and gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

  5. Pour the mixture into a flat tin lined with paper.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Once cool, cover with almond icing.

  3. Pour green water icing on top and sprinkle with coconut or chopped almonds, or decorate with royal icing.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and crumb together as the cake bakes.
Castor sugar
Creams with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and a golden browning.
Valencia raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates the foam and produces a dense cake.

“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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