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English Banbury Cakes
Two pounds of best currants, one-half pound of butter, one pound of candied lemon peel, a scant half ounce of powdered allspice, one-half ounce of powdered cinnamon. Make a nice pastry, cut it into oblong or diamond shape, cut a little cross in the upper crust, fill and bake.-Mrs H. G. Taft.
A filling formula rather than a full recipe: the pastry, the oven and the yield are all left to the cook. Everything below fills those gaps and adjusts proportions that read strangely to a modern palate.
- ScaleTwo pounds of currants plus a pound of peel is a party quantity; the recipe gives no yield, but this is filling for several dozen cakes. Quartering it gives 8 oz currants, 2 oz butter, 4 oz peel and roughly a teaspoon and a half each of the spices, which is a manageable single batch.
- The pastry is puffBanbury cakes are traditionally made with puff or rough puff pastry, which is what "a nice pastry" would have meant here. All-butter frozen puff, rolled a little thinner than it comes, works and is closer to the original than shortcrust.
- Making the fillingMelt the butter, stir in the currants, finely chopped peel and spices, and let the mixture cool to room temperature before filling. Warm filling melts the pastry layers and the cakes leak in the oven.
- No sugar is listedThe sweetness comes entirely from the currants and the candied peel. If your peel is the drier commercial sort, a tablespoon or two of brown sugar per half pound of fruit brings it back into balance; a splash of rum or brandy is common in period versions.
- A pound of candied peelThat is a very high proportion by current taste — half the weight of the currants. Chop it fine and consider cutting it to a quarter of the currant weight unless you particularly like peel.
- Shaping and the crossThe recipe calls for oblong or diamond shapes, though oval is the shape usually associated with Banbury cakes: fill, fold the pastry over, seal, then turn seam-side down and flatten gently. The little cross cut in the top lets steam escape.
- OvenBake at 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, until well risen and deep gold. Brush the tops with egg white and dust with caster sugar before baking for the usual glossy crust.
- SpicesHalf an ounce each of allspice and cinnamon is about two tablespoons of each for the full batch — assertive but in keeping. Ground spice loses its edge quickly, so use a jar opened within the year.
Banbury cakes take their name from the Oxfordshire market town, where spiced currant pastries have been sold since at least the seventeenth century; the shop on Parsons Street that traded on the name into the twentieth century is the usual anchor for the story. They belong to the same family as Eccles and Chorley cakes — flat, flaky, stuffed with dried fruit and warm spice — and the differences between them are largely of shape and of how much peel and spice goes in. The appearance of one here, credited to a contributor rather than to a cookbook, is a reminder of how such recipes travelled: an English regional specialty passed along by someone who had eaten it or copied it from an English source, reproduced as a list of quantities on the assumption that any competent housekeeper already knew how to make pastry and heat an oven.