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Dessert

Quick Buckwheat Cakes

A quick buckwheat pancake made with buckwheat flour, cornmeal, molasses, baking powder, and water, cooked on a griddle.

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 ↓

Quick Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buckwheat flour, cornmeal or wheat flour, salt, and molasses.

  2. Gradually add cold or warm water to create a thin batter.

  3. Finally, mix in the baking powder until well combined.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Buckwheat + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 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
Provides the main structure and the characteristic earthy, nutty flavour of the pancakes.
Cornmeal or wheat flour
Adds body and a slightly grainier texture alongside the buckwheat flour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps the surface brown as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and become light and airy.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking powder. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it meets liquid and heat, so it should be stirred in last and the batter cooked promptly. Waiting too long lets the gas escape and leaves the pancakes flatter and denser.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat, molasses. 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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