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Dessert

Buckwheat Cakes and Maple Syrup

Buckwheat cakes made with flour, water, baking powder, sugar, egg, served with maple syrup.

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 ↓

Buckwheat Cakes and Maple Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix buckwheat flour, baking powder, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg and add water in another bowl.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and lightly grease it.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form cakes.

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

  4. Serve warm with maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 cakes and gives them their earthy, nutty flavour.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn light.
Water
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form, then flip. Bubbles show that the leavening has set the surface and the centre is cooked enough to hold. Flipping too early can tear the cakes, and cooking on too high a heat browns the outside before the inside sets.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, maple syrup. 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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