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Baking

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are a griddle‑cooked batter made with buckwheat meal, Indian meal, brewer's yeast, salt, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and butter work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 213 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix buckwheat meal, salt, and Indian meal.

  2. Make a well in the center and add brewer's yeast.

  3. Gradually mix in cold water until it forms a batter.

  4. Cover the bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about 3 hours until light and bubbly.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a griddle over the fire until hot and grease it with butter on a rag.

  2. Pour a large ladleful of batter onto the griddle and bake, turning with a broad wooden paddle. Ensure the cakes are large and even at the edges.

  3. Butter the cakes as you remove them from the griddle.

  4. Cut the cakes into six pieces and re-grease the griddle between each cake.

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 + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat meal
Forms the main body of the batter and gives the cakes their earthy flavour and structure.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the batter during rising, producing gas that makes the cakes light and bubbly.
Indian meal
Adds body and a grainy texture to the batter alongside the buckwheat meal.
Salt
Seasons the batter and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until light and bubbly. Yeast needs enough time in a warm place to ferment; under-rising leaves the cakes dense, while the batter's gas bubbles are what lighten the texture.

“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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