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Baking

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are batter made from wheat and buckwheat flour, yeast, salt, water, cooked 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: Wheat and buckwheat 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

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the wheat flour and buckwheat flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add the yeast and salt, then mix in enough lukewarm water to form a batter.

Rise overnight

  1. Let the batter rise in a warm place overnight.

  2. In the morning, if the batter tastes sour, add a pinch of baking soda; if not, skip this step.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a large griddle until very hot and grease it well with lard.

  2. Pour the batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot with butter.

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. Wheat + buckwheattop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Flour + buckwheattop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Gives the cakes their earthy, nutty flavor and darker color.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein for more structure and chew in the batter.
Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the cakes rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Preheat the griddle very hot and grease it well. A hot, well-greased surface sets the outside of each cake quickly, so it releases cleanly and browns evenly instead of sticking or steaming.

“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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