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Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat, wheat, and cornmeal cooked on a griddle to make flat cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine buckwheat flour, wheat flour, cornmeal, molasses, tepid water, and coarse sea salt. Stir thoroughly.

  2. Add the baker's yeast and mix well.

  3. Cover and let stand overnight.

Cook the cakes

  1. Before baking, stir in the baking soda.

  2. Pour batter onto a hot griddle and cook until bubbles form on the surface. Flip and cook until golden brown.

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 earthy, nutty flavour of the cakes.
Baker's yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas bubbles that make the cakes light and airy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the fermented batter to add extra lift and help the cakes brown.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Letting the batter stand overnight. The yeast needs time to ferment the batter. Without a full rest, the cakes will be dense and flat, with little of the characteristic sour, yeasty flavour.

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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