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Griddle-cakes

Buckwheat batter is folded with beaten eggs and cooked on a greased griddle to make light, spongy cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and buckwheat work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the griddle

  1. If using an iron griddle, grease it with fat salt pork on a fork.

  2. Preheat the griddle until hot.

  3. Test a small amount of batter to check the griddle's heat.

Make the batter

  1. Separate the eggs; beat the yolks until thick and creamy.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the yolks.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour 1 tablespoon of batter for each cake onto the griddle.

  2. Bake until light, thick, and spongy; do not stir after the batter has risen.

  3. Do not turn the cakes a second time while baking.

  4. Stack the finished cakes on a hot plate.

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. Pork + buckwheattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buckwheattop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Egg + porktop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites and beaten yolks give the cakes their light, spongy lift.
Buckwheat batter
Forms the body of the cakes, setting into a thick, tender crumb on the griddle.

The step that matters

Turning the cakes. Once the batter has risen and set, turning or stirring it knocks out the trapped air from the whipped egg whites, collapsing the cakes and making them flat and dense. Leave them alone until they are done.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Buckwheatthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pork. 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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