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Buckwheat Cakes, No. 1

Buckwheat cakes are pancakes made with buckwheat and wheat flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Buckwheat Cakes, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the buckwheat flour, wheat flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  2. Mix the dry ingredients with sweet milk until you achieve a smooth batter.

Cook

  1. Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown on both sides.

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. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Gives the pancakes their nutty, earthy flavour and a denser, more tender crumb.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten structure so the pancakes hold together and are less crumbly.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the pancakes rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown evenly on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown on both sides. If the griddle is not hot enough, the pancakes spread and cook slowly, turning pale and gummy inside. Too hot and the outside browns before the centre sets. Wait for the pancakes to bubble and the edges to look dry before flipping.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

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