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Buckwheat Cakes

Thin buckwheat batter cooked on a greased griddle to make cakes.

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

Make the batter

  1. Combine warm water (or milk) with salt in a bowl.

  2. Stir in enough buckwheat flour to create a thin batter.

  3. Add yeast and mix until smooth.

  4. Cover and let the batter sit in a warm place overnight.

Cook the pancakes

  1. In the morning, stir in baking soda and molasses just before cooking.

  2. Grease the griddle lightly with lard or rub it with salt pork.

  3. Pour batter onto the griddle to make thin cakes and cook until golden brown.

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. Milk + buckwheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main body of the batter and gives the pancakes their earthy, nutty flavor.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas bubbles that give the pancakes a light, airy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the fermented batter to add extra lift and help the cakes rise and brown.
Molasses or syrup
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook the pancakes after adding baking soda. Baking soda should be stirred in just before cooking, because it starts reacting as soon as it meets the batter. Waiting too long loses lift, so the cakes come out flatter.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Buckwheatthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, molasses, 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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