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Dessert

Tennis Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, citron peel, currants, cherries, almonds, almond paste, glazed with apricot puree and decorated with icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tennis Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).

  2. Line two 2‑lb bread tins with paper.

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

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  5. Gradually mix in the flour.

  6. Add the chopped citron peel, currants, cherries, and chopped almonds.

  7. Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared tins.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake for one hour.

  2. Allow the cakes to cool completely.

Decorate

  1. Glaze the tops with apricot puree.

  2. Evenly cover with half of the almond paste.

  3. Top with fondant icing.

  4. Decorate the edge with royal icing.

  5. Write the word 'Tennis' in pale green or pink icing to finish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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, giving a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Currants
Add chewy texture and sweetness throughout the cake.
Almond paste
Adds sweetness, moisture and a rich almond flavour under the icing.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates the base structure of the cake. Under-creaming leaves a dense, heavy crumb, while adding the eggs too quickly can split the batter.

Swap the currant

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

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

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