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Buckwheat Cakes with Baking Powder

Buckwheat cakes made with buckwheat and wheat flour, baking powder, molasses, butter, and cooked on a griddle.

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 a little water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the molasses and mix until you have a soft batter.

  4. Add the melted butter and mix well.

Cook

  1. Cook on a hot griddle like other griddle cakes.

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
Gives the cakes their earthy flavour and main structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, so the cakes rise and turn light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to add lift and a darker colour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and depth of flavour, and aids browning.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle. If the griddle is too cool, the batter spreads and soaks up fat without setting, giving flat, greasy cakes. A hot surface sets the outside quickly while the leavening lifts the interior, so the cakes rise and brown evenly.

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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