Skip to main content
Main

Plantation Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat flour, cornmeal, yeast, and molasses cooked on a greased griddle.

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

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 ↓

Plantation Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in the lukewarm milk.

  2. Pour boiling water into the other milk and add salt to the sifted buckwheat flour and cornmeal.

  3. Gradually stir the dry mixture into the liquid.

  4. Add the dissolved yeast and beat hard for ten minutes.

  5. Let the batter stand in a warm place overnight.

  6. In the morning, add the baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon of sweet milk and the molasses, then beat well.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a greased griddle and pour batter onto it.

  2. Grease the griddle again between each cake.

  3. Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then turn and cook the other side.

  4. Serve hot, stacking the cakes on a platter.

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. 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 + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Buckwheat + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides the main structure and the distinctive earthy flavour of the cakes.
White cornmeal
Adds body and a slightly coarse texture to the batter.
Yeast cake
Ferments the batter overnight, creating bubbles and a light, airy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to add extra lift and help the cakes rise and brown.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand in a warm place overnight. The yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the batter; if it is too cold the batter will not rise well, and the cakes will be dense and flat.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, molasses. 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

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes