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Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are yeast-leavened batter cakes baked or griddled, served hot with honey or maple sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

six cakes
Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix syrup, salt, and warm water in a bowl.

  2. Add Buckwheat flour to make a thick batter.

  3. Stir in the yeast.

  4. Let the batter rise in a warm place.

Bake the muffin rings

  1. Grease muffin rings on a baking sheet.

  2. Fill the rings with batter.

  3. Bake in a slow oven until done.

Make the griddle cakes

  1. Mix yeast with lukewarm water. Let rest.

  2. Combine with Buckwheat flour, cold water, and salt. Let rest for four hours.

  3. Grease a hot griddle.

  4. Pour batter to form six cakes.

  5. Cook for 2.5 minutes on each side until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with honey or maple sugar.

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. Buckwheat + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Buckwheat + honeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

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

  4. Syrup + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Syrup + honeytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 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 and gives the cakes their earthy, nutty structure.
German yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Syrup or treacle
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and a deeper flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Cook for 2.5 minutes on each side until golden brown. Heat must be high enough to set the batter quickly and brown the surface, but not so high that the outside burns before the centre sets. Greasing a hot griddle helps prevent sticking.

Swap the buckwheat

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, flour, pork, honey):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, flour, pork, honey. 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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