Banbury Cheese became something of a byword for anything unreasonably thin, Bardolph calls Slender a "Banbury cheese" in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, and in Jack Drum's Entertainment we read, "You are like a Banbury cheese, nothing but paring."
Original Receipt in Huswife 1594;To make a tarte of Cheese
MAKE your tart, and then take Banberie Cheese, and pare away the outside of it, and cut the cleane cheese in small peeces and put them into the Tart, and when your Tart is full of Cheese: then put two handfuls of sugar into your Tart vpon your cheese, and cast in it fiue or sixe spoonfuls of Rosewater, and close it vp with a couer, and with a feather lay sweet molten Butter vpon it, and fine sugar, and bake it in a soft Ouen.