Skip to main content
Main

Griddle Cakes

A batter of buckwheat and all-purpose flour, milk, eggs, and sugar cooked on a griddle to make thin cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Griddle Cakes

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 ↓

Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix buckwheat flour, all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together milk and eggs.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed; the batter should be moderately thin.

Cook the griddle cakes

  1. Preheat a smooth griddle over medium‑high heat.

  2. If using a regular griddle, lightly grease it with fat; if using a soapstone griddle, no fat is needed.

  3. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until bubbles form, then flip and cook 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Gives the cakes their distinct nutty, earthy flavor and a hearty structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten-forming structure so the cakes hold together when flipped.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the batter and set during cooking.
Milk
Hydrates the flours and makes a pourable batter that cooks into tender cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the cakes puff and turn fluffy.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the cakes brown evenly to golden.

The step that matters

Combining the wet and dry ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cakes stay tender rather than tough. Overmixing also knocks out the air that baking powder needs to lift the batter.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes