A Banbury cake is a spiced, currant-filled, flat pastry cake similar to an Eccles cake, although it is more oval in shape. Once made and sold exclusively in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, Banbury cakes have been made in the region to secret recipes since 1586 or earlier and there they are still made today, but not in such quantity. The cakes were once sent as far afield as Australia, India and America.
Banbury Cakes were first made in the sixteenth century by Edward Welchman, whose shop was on Parsons Street.[1] In the late nineteenth century, the notorious refreshment rooms at Swindon railway station sold 'Banbury cakes and pork pies (obviously stale)'.[2][3]
Besides currants, the filling typically includes: mixed peel; brown sugar; rose water; rum; and nutmeg.
In Ulysses, by James Joyce, the character Bloom feeds the seagulls by throwing pieces of two Banbury cakes, which he bought for a penny, into the Liffey.[4][5]
Banbury cakes appear in Noel Coward's Brief Encounter when Albert Godby, played by Stanley Holloway, knocks over a cake stand of them while asking Myrle Bagot, the buffet manageress, played by Joyce Carey, for a kiss across the tearoom counter.