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Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat cakes made with buckwheat flour, yeast, molasses, salt, and baking soda, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. In a bowl, combine warm water, yeast, molasses, and salt.

  2. Mix in enough buckwheat flour to create a thick batter.

  3. Cover and let rise in a warm place overnight.

Finish and cook

  1. The next morning, dissolve baking soda in hot water and stir it into the batter.

  2. Let the batter sit in a warm place for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Cook the cakes on a griddle until done.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + buckwheattop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that makes the cakes light and airy.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the thick batter that gives the cakes their body and nutty flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to release gas, adding extra lift as the cakes cook.
Molasses
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and deeper flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise overnight. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the batter. Too little rising leaves the cakes dense, because the gas that lifts them has not built up enough structure in the batter.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, 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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