Skip to main content
Main

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are a batter made with buckwheat flour, yeast, molasses, and baking soda, cooked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the batter

  1. Combine cold water, salt, and buckwheat flour in a stone jar.

  2. Mix until smooth.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in ½ cup of tepid water.

  4. Add the dissolved yeast to the mixture and stir well.

  5. Cover the jar.

  6. Let it sit in a warm place overnight.

  7. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water.

  8. Mix the dissolved baking soda into the batter.

  9. Add the molasses and mix thoroughly.

Cook and keep batter

  1. Heat a griddle until very hot.

  2. Grease the griddle with pork fat.

  3. Pour batter onto the griddle.

  4. Cook until golden brown.

  5. Test one cake for bitterness.

  6. If bitter, add a little more baking soda to the batter.

  7. Reserve 1 cup of batter for the next batch.

  8. Cover the reserved batter with cold water.

  9. Store in a cool place until evening.

  10. Repeat the process with fresh buckwheat, water, and salt for subsequent batches.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. 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
Forms the bulk of the batter and provides the structure and earthy flavor of the cakes.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that makes the cakes light and airy.
Baking soda
Neutralizes acidity from fermentation and helps the cakes brown and rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor, and helps the cakes brown.

The step that matters

Testing one cake for bitterness. Buckwheat and fermentation can leave a bitter taste. Testing one cake lets the cook adjust the baking soda, which neutralizes acidity and softens bitterness, before cooking the rest of the batter.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes