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Dessert

Banbury Tarts

A fruit tart made with raisins, lemon, sugar, and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Banbury Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the lemons and remove the seeds.

  2. Cook the lemons until tender in the water using a double boiler.

  3. Put the cooked lemons through a food chopper.

  4. Combine the raisins and chopped lemons in the cooking water.

  5. Add the sugar to the mixture.

  6. Thicken the mixture with flour dissolved in a little cold water.

  7. Let the mixture sit for at least 24 hours before using.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the pastry into rounds with a large biscuit cutter.

  2. Place a teaspoon of filling on each round.

  3. Fold over the pastry like a turnover.

  4. Pinch the edges together.

  5. Bake the 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide chewy body and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a thick, jam-like texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the filling holds its shape in the tart.
Flaky pastry
Forms the crisp, layered shell that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour dissolved in cold water. Flour must be dissolved in cold water before it goes into the hot mixture, otherwise it clumps. Starch swells and thickens the filling only once it is heated, so the mixture should be cooked enough for the flour to set it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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