Skip to main content
Bread

Cakes, Buckwheat

Buckwheat cakes made with buckwheat flour, cornmeal, yeast, salt, warm water, and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cakes, Buckwheat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine buckwheat flour, cornmeal, yeast, and salt.

  2. Gradually mix in warm water until well combined.

  3. Cover and let the mixture rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle to form large cakes and cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve warm, dipping each cake in soft butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buckwheat + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the batter and gives the cakes their earthy flavour and structure.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and gives the cakes a light, airy texture.
Cornmeal
Adds a grainy texture and body to the batter.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour and meal and activates the yeast to form a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until doubled. The yeast needs time in a warm place to ferment and build gas bubbles. Under-proofed batter yields dense, flat cakes, so wait for the full doubling before cooking.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes