Name: Banbury Cakes
Ingredients: ½ pound butter, softened; ½ pound lemon and orange peel, finely chopped; 1 pound currants; ½ ounce cinnamon; 2½ ounces allspice; 1 egg white, for sealing; Sugar, for brushing

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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

In a bowl, cream the softened butter until smooth.
Mix in the chopped lemon and orange peel, currants, cinnamon, and allspice until well combined.
Store the mixture in a covered jar until ready to use.
Roll out a rich pastry dough thinly and cut into rounds or squares.
Place a layer of the mince on one round, cover with another, and flatten the edges.
Moisten the edges with egg white to seal them.
Brush the tops with a mixture of egg froth and sugar.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.
Serve hot or cold.

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).
Lemon + orangetop 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, lemon, orange, cinnamon, allspice, egg, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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