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Dessert

Quick Buckwheat Cakes

A quick buckwheat cake made with buckwheat flour, salt, sugar, buttermilk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Quick Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buckwheat flour, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add buttermilk gradually to form a stiff batter.

  3. Stir in baking soda until well mixed.

Cook

  1. Heat a well-oiled skillet over medium-high heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet and cook 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 + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Buckwheat + buttermilktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them their earthy, nutty flavour.
Buttermilk
Hydrates the flour into a stiff batter and adds a slight tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the cakes.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Pour batter onto the skillet and cook until golden brown on both sides. The skillet must be well oiled and hot enough to set the batter quickly. Flipping only after the underside sets and browns keeps the cakes from tearing or sticking.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, buttermilk. 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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