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Dessert

Buckwheat Cake

A baked cake made with buckwheat flour, eggs, sugar, butter, sour milk, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Buckwheat Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in the thick sour milk and baking soda.

  3. Gradually add buckwheat flour until you achieve a thick batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Thick sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to lift the batter as it bakes.
Buckwheat flour
Provides the main structure and a distinctive nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add buckwheat flour until you achieve a thick batter.. Buckwheat flour has no gluten to form a network, so the batter's thickness mainly controls how well it holds its shape and rises. Adding flour gradually lets you stop at a thick, spoonable consistency rather than an overly stiff or runny one.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, 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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