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Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat flour, yeast, baking powder, and water cooked on a greased 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. Dissolve the yeast in a cup half full of warm water taken from the quart.

  2. In a stone crock, combine the flour and salt, then stir in the warm water until smooth.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast and set the mixture in a warm place to rise overnight.

Bake and serve

  1. When ready to bake, stir in the baking powder.

  2. Heat a griddle and grease it with a piece of fat pork.

  3. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown.

  4. Serve hot with soft butter spread on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Buckwheat + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Buckwheat + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 bulk of the batter and gives the pancakes their earthy, nutty flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas bubbles that leaven the pancakes and add tang.
Baking powder
Adds extra lift at the end so the pancakes rise further on the griddle.

The step that matters

Setting the batter to rise overnight. The yeast needs a long, warm rest to ferment properly. Too cool or too short a rise leaves the batter flat and dense, so the pancakes will not lighten.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Jalapenofits about as well
  2. Buckwheatthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pork, butter. 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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