Name: Griddle Cakes
Ingredients: ½ cup cornmeal; 2 cups all-purpose flour; 2 cups buckwheat flour; 1 quart warm water; ½ cup yeast; 1 coffee cup of batter (reserved for next day); 1 teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Flour and buckwheat 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

Pour boiling water over the cornmeal.
Mix the cornmeal with the flour, buckwheat flour, and warm water.
Add the yeast and beat the mixture hard for 10 minutes.
Set the batter to rise in a warm place overnight.
In the morning, beat the batter well and let it rise again before baking.
Reserve a coffee cup of batter for the next morning and add baking soda to it.

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.

Flour + buckwheattop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Buckwheat + coffeetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Flour + coffeetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,141 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).