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Dessert

Buckwheat Short Cake

A quick buckwheat cake made with sour milk, baking soda, and buckwheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Buckwheat Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk and baking soda until well mixed.

  2. Gradually stir in buckwheat flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake 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

Sour milk
Provides the liquid and acidity that react with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour milk to produce gas that makes the shortcake rise.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the structure of the batter and gives the shortcake its nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the buckwheat flour. Buckwheat flour has no gluten, so the batter sets mainly through its starch and liquid. Stirring until just combined into a stiff batter keeps the texture even and avoids a lumpy, dense result.

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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