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Dessert

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are a batter made with buckwheat flour, yeast, lard, molasses, baking soda, and salt, baked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Stir buckwheat flour into lukewarm water until you have a thick batter.

  2. Dissolve the yeast and stir it into the batter.

  3. Set the batter in a warm place overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, melt the lard with the molasses and baking soda.

  2. Stir this mixture into the batter along with the salt.

  3. Bake quickly on a hot griddle.

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 thick batter that gives the pancakes their body and earthy flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas bubbles that make the pancakes light and airy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and fermentation acids to add lift and deepen browning.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a darker colour to the pancakes.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the pancakes release and brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Bake quickly on a hot griddle. A griddle that is not hot enough lets the batter spread and soak up fat before it sets, giving flat, greasy pancakes. A properly hot surface sets the outside fast, trapping the rising gas and encouraging an even golden browning.

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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