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Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are a batter made from buckwheat flour, cornmeal, yeast, and water, cooked on a griddle.

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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Gradually mix in lukewarm water until the mixture is thicker than batter.

  3. Cover and let it rise in a moderately warm place.

Cook

  1. Before baking, if the mixture is not sweet, add a little baking soda.

  2. Heat a griddle and pour the batter to cook the cakes.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their distinctive earthy flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes airy before cooking.
Cornmeal
Adds a slightly gritty texture and corn flavour to the cakes.
Baking soda
Neutralises acidity from fermentation and helps the cakes rise and brown.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise. Yeast needs time in a moderately warm place to ferment the batter. Rising too short or too cold leaves the cakes dense, while the batter should stay thick enough to hold its shape.

“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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