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Buckwheat Cakes

A buckwheat and wheat flour batter with yeast, molasses, and baking soda, baked 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 ↓

Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. In a bowl, mix buckwheat flour and wheat flour.

  2. Stir in warm water to form a stiff batter and add yeast.

  3. Cover and let rise overnight.

Finish the batter

  1. In the morning, pour most of the batter into another dish, leaving 1 pint for raising again.

  2. Add molasses and baking soda dissolved in hot water to the remaining batter.

  3. Thin the batter with warm water until it reaches the right consistency for baking on a griddle.

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 flavour of the cakes.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that makes the cakes rise and become airy.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth and a darker colour to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to add extra lift and help the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Thinning the batter to the right consistency. Batter that is too thick bakes up dense and doughy, while batter that is too thin spreads and cooks flat. Adjusting it with warm water gives the cakes the right rise and texture on the griddle.

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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