Skip to main content
Main

Blinis

Small buckwheat pancakes made with milk, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Blinis

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the buckwheat flour with warm milk until you have a batter similar to frying batter.

  2. Add a pinch of salt, 2 egg yolks, and 1 whole egg to the mixture.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

Cook the blini

  1. Melt some butter and use it to grease small blini or pancake pans.

  2. Heat the pans and pour a small amount of batter into each.

  3. Once the bottom is firm, brush the top with butter and flip the blinis.

  4. Cook until done, brush with more butter, and remove from the pan.

  5. Serve the blinis hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Provides the main body and earthy flavor of the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help the blini rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, adding tenderness and flavor.
Milk
Hydrates the flour into a pourable batter and adds moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the blini stay light instead of dense.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Buckwheatthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes