Why it works: Buckwheat and butter work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 213 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓
Buckwheat Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
In a bowl, mix buckwheat meal, salt, and cornmeal.
Make a well in the center and add brewer's yeast.
Gradually mix in cold water until it forms a batter.
Cover the bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about 3 hours.
Once light and bubbly, heat a griddle until hot.
Grease the griddle with butter using a cloth.
Pour a ladleful of batter onto the griddle and bake.
Turn the cake with a broad wooden paddle when bubbles form.
Butter the cakes as you remove them from the griddle.
Cut the cakes into six pieces and serve.
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.
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Buckwheat + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together213 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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