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Dessert

Quick Buckwheat Cakes

A quick buckwheat cake or bun made with flour, cornmeal, yeast, baking powder, milk, butter, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Quick Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine buckwheat flour, cornmeal or wheat flour, salt, and syrup.

  2. Add cold or warm water to create a thin batter.

  3. Mix in baking powder.

  4. Warm milk and butter together, then add yeast.

  5. Add enough flour to make a thick batter.

  6. Add eggs.

  7. Add sugar.

Shape and rise

  1. Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled in your hands.

  2. Let the mixture stand until light.

  3. Shape into buns.

  4. Allow the buns to rise in the pans for 4 hours before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 15 minutes.

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 + wheattop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Provides the main structure and the distinctive nutty flavor of the cakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the batter so the cakes become light.
Baking powder
Releases gas when wet and heated, adding extra rise to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, richness and moisture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and helps the cakes brown when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until light. Yeast needs time to ferment and trap gas in the batter. If the mixture is not allowed to rise fully, the buns will be dense and heavy after baking.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat, syrup, milk, butter, egg, sugar. 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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