Name: Buckwheat Cakes
Ingredients: 1 pint buckwheat flour; ¼ pint cornmeal; ¼ pint wheat flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 eggs, beaten; 1 quart warm milk; 1 tablespoon butter or sweet lard; 2 tablespoons yeast; baking soda (if needed)

Why it works: Buckwheat and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine buckwheat flour, cornmeal, wheat flour, and salt.
In another bowl, mix warm milk with beaten eggs and add to the flour mixture.
Stir in butter or lard and yeast until well combined.
Cover and let the batter rise overnight.
If the batter is sour, add enough baking soda to correct the acidity before baking.

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.

Buckwheat + wheattop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together113 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).