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Dessert

Banbury Meat

A sweet preserve made with butter, sugar, flour, candied peel, currants, spices, cake, biscuits, apples, lemon, and jam or treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Banbury Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Mix in the moist sugar, flour, candied peels, currants, cinnamon, and allspice.

  3. In another bowl, combine the crumbled cake, biscuits, chopped apples, and a little butter and sugar.

  4. Add the lemon juice and rind, and mix well.

Finish and store

  1. Moisten the mixture with raspberry jam or treacle to your taste.

  2. Press the mixture into a jar and store for later use.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a soft, spreadable body to the mixture.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Stale cake
Absorbs moisture and adds bulk, giving the mixture body.
Raspberry jam or treacle
Adds moisture and sweetness, binding the mixture together.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, orange, lemon, cinnamon, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, orange, lemon, cinnamon, allspice. 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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