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Dessert

Buckwheat Drop Cakes

Buckwheat drop cakes are small cakes made with buckwheat flour, raisins, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Buckwheat Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the fat and corn syrup.

  2. Add the milk to the mixture.

  3. In another bowl, combine the buckwheat flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cloves.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Fold in the raisins.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + buckwheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Buckwheat + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Provides the structure and the nutty, earthy flavour of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the cakes as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and turn light.
Corn syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture and helps the cakes brown.
Fat
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Milk
Moistens the flour so the batter forms a soft, scoopable dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding the flour in portions helps blend it evenly without overworking the batter. Overmixing develops gluten and can make the cakes tough, while uneven mixing leaves pockets of dry flour.

Swap the buckwheat

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, syrup, raisin, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Buckwheatthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, syrup, raisin, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon. 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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