Besides currants, the filling typically includes mixed peel, brown sugar, rum, and nutmeg.

[1] The cakes were once sent as far afield as Australia, the East Indies and America, normally in locally-made wickerwork baskets.

[3] An Elizabethan recipe includes flavourings such as ambergris, musk and rose water that are historically used in perfumes and would not be commonly seen in a modern preparation.

[6] The notoriously poorly run 19th-century refreshment rooms at Swindon railway station sold "Banbury cakes and pork pies (obviously stale)".

[7][8] In the novel by Norman Collins, London Belongs to Me, set in 1939, Connie eats a Banbury cake at Victoria Station.