Skip to main content
Main

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat cakes made with buckwheat flour, milk or water, yeast, salt, optional baking soda and butter, served with Louisiana syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine warm milk or water with salt and buckwheat flour. Mix until smooth.

  2. Add the dissolved yeast and beat until smooth.

  3. Cover and let rise overnight.

Cook and serve

  1. In the morning, add baking soda to counter any sourness and increase lightness.

  2. Heat a griddle and pour batter to form cakes.

  3. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

  4. Serve with Louisiana syrup.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 batter and gives the cakes their distinctive earthy flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the batter during the overnight rise, producing bubbles that make the cakes light.
Baking soda
Neutralises sourness from fermentation and adds lightness by reacting in the batter.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour to form a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda in the morning. Baking soda neutralises the acids produced during overnight fermentation and reacts to add lift. Adding it at the wrong time or in excess can leave a soapy taste or cause uneven browning.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes