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Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat cakes are made by mixing buckwheat flour with water, molasses, and salt, then adding acid and baking soda before cooking on a griddle.

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. Mix the buckwheat flour with warm water, salt, and molasses overnight until it reaches the consistency of pancake batter.

Finish and cook

  1. In the morning, add equal measures of acid and baking soda to the batter, thinning it if necessary.

  2. Bake immediately on a hot griddle.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Buckwheat + buttermilktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat flour
Forms the main body of the pancakes and gives them a nutty, earthy flavour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deeper, darker flavour to the batter.
Acid
Reacts with baking soda to produce gas that makes the pancakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, lightening the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the acid and baking soda. Acid and baking soda react quickly to release gas, so the batter should be cooked immediately after they are added. Waiting lets the gas escape and the pancakes rise less.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

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