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Buckwheat Cakes

A quick buckwheat cake made with flour, water, yeast, salt, syrup, and butter, baked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Make a sponge or batter overnight with warm water, yeast, and buckwheat flour.

  2. In the morning, add syrup, butter, and salt; mix well.

Cook

  1. Bake thin cakes on a hot griddle.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Buckwheat + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Buckwheat + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 body of the pancake; without gluten, it sets without much stretch.
Yeast
Ferments the overnight batter, producing gas that makes the cakes light and airy.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Making the overnight sponge. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the batter. Given too little time, the sponge won't develop the gas and flavor that make the cakes light and tangy.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, syrup, butter. 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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