Skip to main content
Main

Buckwheat Cakes

A buckwheat batter baked on a hot griddle, flavored with molasses and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Combine cold water, salt, and buckwheat flour in a stone jar; mix until smooth.

  2. Add yeast dissolved in ½ cup tepid water; mix well.

  3. Cover jar and let sit in a warm place overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. Add ¼ teaspoon baking soda dissolved in boiling water; mix thoroughly.

  2. Stir in molasses; bake on a hot griddle greased with fat pork.

  3. Test one cake; if bitter or heavy, add more baking soda to batter.

  4. Reserve 1 cup batter for next batch; cover with cold water; store in cool place until evening.

  5. Pour off clear water; add fresh buckwheat, water, and salt; stir smooth; let sit until next day.

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's body and gives the pancakes their earthy, nutty flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that lightens the pancakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the fermented batter to add lift and soften any bitterness.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, and a deeper flavour to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Testing one cake before adding more baking soda. Baking soda raises the batter's alkalinity, which can help soften bitterness and lighten texture, but too much leaves a soapy taste and can darken the crumb. Testing one cake first lets the cook adjust the batter safely.

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.

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes