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Dessert

Tennis Cake

A buttery cake with raisins, currants, candied peel, and almonds, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a cake tin with buttered paper, including the bottom.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream using a wooden fork.

  2. Add the sugar and well-beaten eggs to the butter.

  3. Mix the baking powder with the flour and gradually add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the candied peel, stoned and chopped raisins, currants, and almonds. Beat the mixture well together.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn lighter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a soft crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the butter to a cream. Creaming softened butter until light traps air that helps leaven the cake. If the butter is too cold or under-beaten, the batter stays dense and the crumb turns heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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