Name: Buckwheat Cakes
Ingredients: 1 pint buckwheat flour; ¼ pint corn meal; ¼ pint wheat flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 eggs, beaten very light; 1 quart new milk, warmed; 1 tablespoon butter or sweet lard; 2 large tablespoons yeast; baking soda (if needed)

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

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the buckwheat flour, corn meal, wheat flour, and salt.
In another bowl, combine the warm milk and beaten eggs.
Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and stir until combined.
Melt the butter or lard and add it to the batter along with the yeast.
Cover and let the batter rise overnight.
If the batter is sour, stir in enough baking soda to correct the acidity before baking.

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.

Buckwheat + wheattop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together113 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Buckwheat + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together67 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).