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Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat flour, sugar, salt, cornmeal, and molasses, cooked in a skillet to make thick cakes.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix buckwheat flour, sugar, salt, cornmeal, and molasses.

  2. Add enough water to create a thin batter.

  3. Beat the mixture well and let it rise in a warm place.

Keep the starter

  1. If the batter is sour in the morning, stir in a small amount of baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  2. Each night, leave about 1 cup of batter to use as a starter for the next day.

  3. Add the usual quantity of flour and mix well each night.

Cook

  1. Cook the cakes in a hot skillet, making them generous in size.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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 body and earthy flavor of the pancakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda (in the method)
Neutralizes sourness in a batter that has fermented overnight.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise in a warm place. Warmth lets the fermentation develop, which gives the batter its rise and sour, tangy flavor. Too cold and the batter stays flat; too long and it turns sour.

Swap the buckwheat

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Buckwheatthe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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