Name: Pancakes in Variety
Ingredients: 2 cups buckwheat flour; 1 cup wheat flour; 2 tablespoons Breadmaker’s Baking Powder; ½ teaspoon salt; Milk (enough to make a thin batter)

Why it works: Buckwheat and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pancakes in Variety

Ingredients

2 cups buckwheat flour
1 cup wheat flour
2 tablespoons Breadmaker’s Baking Powder
½ teaspoon salt
Milk (enough to make a thin batter)

Directions

Sift together the buckwheat flour, wheat flour, baking powder, and salt.
Mix in enough milk to create a thin batter.
Bake immediately on a 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.

Buckwheat + wheattop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together113 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together328 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour: Gives the pancakes their distinctive nutty flavour and earthy structure.
Wheat flour: Provides gluten for structure, so the pancakes hold together more firmly.
Breadmaker's baking powder: Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and turn light.
Milk: Hydrates the flours into a thin batter and adds moisture and browning from its milk sugars.

The step that matters

Bake immediately on a hot griddle. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it meets liquid, so a delay lets the batter lose lift. A hot griddle sets the structure quickly and drives browning.

“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.

Wheat Gruel6 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

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Pancakes in Variety