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Griddle-cakes

Buckwheat batter is poured onto a hot griddle and baked into light, thick, 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

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

  2. Preheat the griddle until hot.

  3. Separate the eggs; beat the yolks to a thick cream.

  4. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the yolks just before baking.

Bake and serve

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

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

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

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

  5. When done, stack the 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
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten it, giving a light, spongy texture.
Buckwheat batter
Forms the body of the cakes, setting into a thick, tender griddle cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped whites into the yolks just before baking. Whipped egg whites trap air that expands with heat and gives lightness. If the whites deflate through waiting or heavy stirring, the cakes turn out flat and dense.

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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