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Buckwheat Cakes

A buckwheat flour batter with yeast, cornmeal, molasses, and baking soda, fried 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and salt.

  2. Dissolve the compressed yeast in ½ cup warm water and add it to the sifted mixture.

  3. Stir in molasses and the remaining warm water; beat thoroughly.

  4. Cover and let rise overnight in a warm place (about 70°F).

Cook

  1. In the morning, beat the mixture briskly, add baking soda, and beat again.

  2. Fry 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.

  1. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buckwheat + molassestop 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

Buckwheat flour
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the cakes their earthy, nutty flavour.
Compressed yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that makes the cakes light and airy.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth, and feeds the yeast during the long rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the fermented batter's acidity to add extra lift and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in a warm place. The yeast needs steady warmth to ferment slowly. Too cold and the batter barely rises; too hot and the yeast can die or over-ferment, leaving a sour, flat result.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

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