Name: English Banbury Cakes
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; ½ pound candied orange peel, finely chopped; ½ pound candied lemon peel, finely chopped; 1 pound currants; ¼ ounce ground cinnamon; ¼ ounce allspice; 1 egg white; loaf sugar, for dusting; flour, for rolling out

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 ↓

English Banbury Cakes

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.

Beat the butter until creamy.
Mix in the candied orange and lemon peel, currants, ground cinnamon, and allspice until well combined.
Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into pieces.
Roll each piece to double its size, place some filling on one side, and fold over.
Shape into an oval and flatten the top, ensuring the seam is at the bottom.
Brush the tops with egg white and dust with loaf sugar.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, orange, lemon, cinnamon, allspice, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.