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Buckwheat Cakes with Baking Powder

Buckwheat cakes are pancakes made with buckwheat and wheat flour, baking powder, molasses, butter, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Buckwheat Cakes with Baking Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the baking powder with the buckwheat and wheat flour.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in water or milk and add it to the flour mixture.

  3. Stir in the molasses to form a soft batter.

  4. Melt the butter and mix it into the batter.

Cook

  1. Cook on a griddle like other pancakes.

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 + wheattop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 structure and the distinctive nutty, earthy flavour of the pancakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to add lift and help the pancakes brown.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed through the batter; clumps create pockets of bitter, unreacted soda and uneven rising.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat, molasses, butter, milk. 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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