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Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat flour, wheat flour, yeast, and molasses or sugar is fried on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and buckwheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast in the water or milk.

  2. Add salt, molasses or sugar, and wheat flour.

  3. Stir in enough buckwheat flour to make a batter.

Rise and cook

  1. Let the batter rise overnight.

  2. Thin the batter if necessary.

  3. Fry the batter on a griddle.

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. Wheat + buckwheattop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Flour + buckwheattop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Compressed yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes it light and bubbly as it rises.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the pancakes their earthy, nutty flavour.
Wheat flour
Adds some gluten, giving the batter a bit more structure and helping it hold together.
Molasses or sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise overnight. The yeast needs time to ferment the starches and sugars in the batter. Under-rising leaves the pancakes dense and flat, while the batter needs to be thinned only after rising so the gas already formed is not lost.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

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