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Buckwheat Cakes

A quick buckwheat batter cooked on a greased griddle to golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buckwheat 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 together the flour, molasses, and salt.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in 2 cups of lukewarm water or diluted milk, then add to the flour mixture and work until smooth.

  3. Stir in another 2 cups of water or milk.

  4. Add the buckwheat flour and mix well.

Rest and bake

  1. In the morning, add the baking soda and thin the batter if necessary.

  2. Bake on a greased griddle until golden brown.

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. Flour + buckwheattop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buckwheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + buckwheattop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Ferments the batter so it becomes light and airy as it rests.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the main body of the pancakes and gives them their distinctive earthy flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to add extra lift and help the pancakes rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor and feeds the yeast.

The step that matters

Thin the batter with baking soda in the morning. Baking soda reacts quickly once added, so it should be mixed in just before baking. Thin the batter only as needed, since a batter that is too thick will bake heavy and a thinned batter spreads more on the griddle.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Buckwheatthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, milk. 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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