Name: Buckwheat Cakes
Ingredients: 1 quart buckwheat flour; 2-3 tablespoons yeast or 1 yeast cake; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ cup buttermilk; ½ cup water; fat pork for greasing

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

In a bowl, stir the buckwheat flour with warm water to make a thick batter.
Add 2-3 tablespoons of yeast or 1 yeast cake and 1 teaspoon of salt.
Mix in an earthen crock at night and set in a warm place.
In the morning, if the batter is sour, add a little baking soda dissolved in hot water and milk to adjust the consistency.
Let the batter stand in a warm place for a few minutes.
Grease the cooking surface with a piece of fat pork.
Reserve some batter in the crock to raise the next batch.
After baking, fill the crock with cold water to keep the batter sweet, pouring off the water at night and mixing as before.

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.

Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Buckwheat + porktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together48 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Buckwheat + buttermilktop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together40 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Buttermilk + porktop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together184 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).