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Dessert

Buckwheat Cakes and Maple Syrup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Make the batter

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

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form cakes.

  3. Cook until bubbles form on the surface, 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. Buckwheat + maple syruptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Flour + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 pancakes and gives them a nutty, earthy flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pancakes rise and become light.
Water
Hydrates the flour so the batter pours and spreads into cakes.

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 that the leavening has done its work. Flipping earlier can tear the cakes, while waiting too long can leave them dry and dense.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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