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Raised Buckwheat Cakes

Raised buckwheat cakes made with buckwheat flour, liquid yeast, molasses, salt, and water, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Raised Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix buckwheat flour, liquid yeast, molasses, salt, and enough lukewarm water to create a smooth, thick batter.

  2. Place the batter in an earthen jar or pitcher, cover with a folded towel, and let it stand in a warm place overnight.

Cook the cakes

  1. If the batter is sour, stir in ¼ teaspoon baking soda dissolved in a little warm water before cooking.

  2. Fry the cakes as directed in the recipe for Indian slap-jacks.

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 + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buckwheat + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 hearty, earthy structure.
Liquid yeast
Ferments the batter overnight so it becomes airy and leavens the cakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour and feeds the yeast during fermentation.
Baking soda
Neutralises sourness in an over-fermented batter, only if needed.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand overnight in a warm place. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the batter; too cold and it barely rises, while over-long fermentation turns it sour, which is why baking soda may be needed.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses. 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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