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Extempore Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat pancakes made with flour, water, salt, sugar, baking powder, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and flour work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 660 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Extempore Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix buckwheat flour, water, salt, sugar, and baking powder until smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat and grease it with butter or oil.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle to form cakes.

  3. Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then flip and cook until golden brown.

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. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Buckwheat + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Forms the body of the batter and gives the pancakes their nutty, earthy flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and become lighter.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown evenly.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form, then flip. Bubbles appearing on the surface show the batter has set enough to hold its shape and the baking powder has done its work. Flipping too early can tear the cake, while waiting too long can dry it out.

Swap the buckwheat

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Buckwheatthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter. 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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