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Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat and white flour cooked on a griddle, served hot with butter or syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Sift together buckwheat flour, white flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with sweet milk, then add to the dry mixture, beating well to avoid lumps.

  3. Melt the shortening and stir it into the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a greased griddle.

  2. Cook until brown underneath and bubbly on top, then flip and brown the other side.

  3. Serve hot with butter, sugar, molasses, or maple syrup.

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. Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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
Gives the pancakes their earthy, nutty flavour and a hearty texture.
White flour
Provides gluten structure so the pancakes hold together and stay tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pancakes rise and become light and bubbly.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flours and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Beat the egg and milk into the dry mix thoroughly. Beating well breaks up clumps of flour so the batter hydrates evenly. Lumps left in the batter can leave dry pockets and uneven texture in the finished pancakes.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk. 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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