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Dessert

Banbury Cakes

A sweet, buttery cake with currants, candied lemon, orange flowers, cinnamon, almonds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until crumbly.

  3. Add cream to form a stiff paste and roll it out thin.

  4. Cut the dough into pieces about 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

Fill and seal

  1. Mix currants, candied lemon, orange flowers, cinnamon, almonds, and sugar.

  2. Strew the mixture over half of the dough pieces.

  3. Cover with the remaining pieces and seal the edges with egg white.

Bake and ice

  1. Ice the tops with froth made from egg white and sugar.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes 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.

  1. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once bound with cream and butter.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the dough crumbly and tender.
Currants
Add chewy sweetness and fruit to the filling.
Almonds
Add richness and nutty texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, whipped with egg white, forms the icing.
Egg white
Seals the pastry edges and forms a glossy icing that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges with egg white. If the edges are not sealed well, the filling can leak out during baking. A firm seal keeps the fruit and almond mixture inside the pastry.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, lemon, orange, cinnamon, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, lemon, orange, cinnamon, almond. 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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