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Dessert

Banbury Cakes

A sweet roll made with flour, yeast, currants, candied peel, spices, honey, wrapped in puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Banbury Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and warm milk. Let it sit until it begins to work.

  2. Add the currants, candied orange and lemon peel, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice. Mix well.

  3. Stir in the honey until fully combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and cut it into oval shapes.

  2. Place the filling on one half of each oval, fold over, and seal the edges.

  3. Dust the tops with sugar.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 structure of the dough that holds the filling.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it becomes light and airy as it rises.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture and helps the filling stay soft and sticky.
Currants
Provide chewy bursts of sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the filling.
Puff pastry
Wraps the filling and puffs and browns in the oven to form a flaky crust.

The step that matters

Let the yeast start working before adding the filling. The yeast needs time to become active; if the mixture is not bubbling and working before the other ingredients go in, the dough may not rise properly and will be dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, orange, lemon, nutmeg, ginger, 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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