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Banbury Tarts

Banbury Tarts are pastry rounds filled with a raisin, citron, fig, lemon, sugar, and crushed cracker mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Banbury Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine raisins, citron, chopped figs, lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, crushed crackers, and water.

  2. Heat the mixture through without boiling.

Assemble the tarts

  1. Roll out the pastry and cut it into rounds using a cutter.

  2. Place 1 tablespoon of the filling on each pastry round.

  3. Fold and seal the edges to form tarts.

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. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide sweetness, chewy body and bulk to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the filling as it heats.
Crushed crackers
Soak up liquid and give the filling body so it holds together.
Figs
Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the filling.
Citron
Adds candied citrus flavour and a firm, chewy texture.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture through without boiling. Boiling the fruit mixture can scorch the sugar and break down the fruit, making the filling dark, sticky and uneven. Gentle heating keeps the fruit intact and the filling moist enough to spoon into the pastry without leaking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, fig, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, sugar. 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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