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Banbury Cakes

Banbury cakes are sweet rolls made with flour, yeast, milk, currants, candied peel, mixed spice, honey, and clarified suet or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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.

Make the dough

  1. Combine the flour, yeast, and warm milk in a bowl.

  2. Let the dough rise.

  3. Mix in the currants, candied peel, mixed spice, and honey.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut into 4-inch rounds.

  2. Place 2 teaspoons of the mixture in the center of each round.

  3. Fold the dough over to form an oval and seal securely.

  4. Place the rounds on a baking sheet and flatten slightly with your hand.

  5. Sprinkle sugar on top and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure once it is mixed with liquid.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising, leavening the dough so it becomes light.
Currants
Add sweetness and moisture to the spiced filling.
Honey
Sweetens the filling and helps it stay moist and sticky.
Candied peel
Adds concentrated citrus-like sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the oval. If the dough is not sealed securely around the filling, the filling can leak out during baking. Pressing the edges firmly keeps the filling inside and the shape intact.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, honey):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, honey. 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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