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Griddle-cakes

A buckwheat batter made with milk, water, and yeast, cooked on a griddle until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Warm the milk and water (one can be cold and the other boiling).

  2. In a large bowl, combine half of the milk and water mixture with the buckwheat flour and beat until smooth.

  3. Add the remaining milk and water, then stir in the yeast.

  4. Beat the batter well and let it rise before cooking.

Cook the griddle cakes

  1. Preheat a clean griddle and grease it lightly if necessary.

  2. 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.

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. Milk + buckwheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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
Forms the main body of the batter and gives the cakes their earthy, nutty flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising, leavening the batter so the cakes become light and airy.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the batter brown golden on the griddle.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise before cooking. Yeast needs time to ferment and produce gas; cooking before the batter has risen results in dense, flat cakes with less airy texture.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour. 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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