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Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are a batter of buckwheat flour, salt, water, 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 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix buckwheat flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Dissolve yeast cake in lukewarm water and add to the mixture.

  3. Set the batter aside to rise overnight.

Cook

  1. Before cooking, add molasses and baking soda mixture, and beat well.

  2. Bake on a hot 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 + 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 batter base and gives the pancakes their earthy, nutty flavour.
Yeast cake
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that makes the pancakes rise and turn light.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness and depth, and feeds the fermentation with sugars.
Baking soda
Reacts with the fermented batter's acidity to add lift and help browning.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and molasses before cooking. Baking soda reacts with acids in the fermented batter to release gas, so it should be beaten in just before cooking. Waiting too long lets the gas escape and leaves the pancakes flatter.

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.

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