Skip to main content
Main

Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat Cakes are a thick batter made from buckwheat flour, cornmeal, Graham flour, yeast, baking soda, and salt, cooked on a buttered griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and Graham flour.

  2. Add fresh yeast, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Pour in enough milk or lukewarm water to create a thick batter.

Rise and cook

  1. Set the batter near a warm place to rise.

  2. Once risen, cook the batter on a well-buttered 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. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fresh yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas, adding lift and helping browning.
Buckwheat flour
Provides the main flavour and the structure of the cakes.
Cornmeal
Adds body and a slightly gritty texture to the batter.
Graham flour
Adds structure and a nutty, wholesome flavour.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise fully before cooking. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that aerates the thick batter. Cooking before it has risen gives dense, flat cakes with less lift.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes