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Buckwheat Cakes

A buckwheat batter made with yeast, molasses, and baking soda, cooked on a hot 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in ½ cup of water.

  2. Mix buckwheat flour, salt, and lukewarm water well.

  3. Set the mixture to rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. Just before using, add molasses and baking soda dissolved in a little warm water.

  2. Beat the mixture well and 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 main body of the pancake, with a distinctive, earthy flavor.
Yeast cake
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas bubbles that make it rise and turn light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity developed during fermentation to add lift and tenderness.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavor, and a darker color to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Setting the batter to rise overnight. Fermentation needs time for the yeast to produce gas and develop flavor. Rushing this step leaves the batter dense and flat, with less of the sour, yeasty character.

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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