Skip to main content
Breakfast

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat cakes are a batter fried on a griddle, made with buckwheat flour, yeast, water, sugar, salt, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the buckwheat flour with the salt and brown sugar.

  2. Mix the yeast with warm water until dissolved.

  3. Gradually pour the yeast mixture onto the buckwheat, stirring for 7-8 minutes.

  4. Cover the mixture and let it rise overnight in a warm place.

Cook

  1. In the morning, heat a griddle and grease it well with lard.

  2. Fry the batter on the hot griddle until golden brown.

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. Buckwheat + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the pancakes their nutty, earthy flavour and structure.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that makes it rise and gives a slightly sour, complex flavour.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and molasses flavour to the batter.
Lard (in the method)
Greases the griddle so the pancakes release cleanly and brown evenly.

The step that matters

Stirring the yeast mixture into the buckwheat. Pouring the liquid in gradually and stirring for the full time distributes the yeast and wets the flour evenly, so the batter ferments uniformly and rises without lumps of dry flour.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes