Skip to main content
Bread

Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat and wheat flour is mixed with yeast, water, and salt, then cooked on a griddle and served with butter.

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

Why it works: Buckwheat and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix buckwheat meal, wheat flour (or cornmeal), and salt.

  2. Add enough moderately warm water to create a thin batter and beat well.

  3. Stir in the yeast until fully combined.

  4. Cover and let the mixture rise in a warm place until light.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a griddle and bake the batter until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot with butter.

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 + wheattop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

  3. Buckwheat + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat meal
Provides the main body and the distinctive nutty, earthy flavour of the pancakes.
Wheat flour or cornmeal
Adds gluten or starch structure that helps the batter hold together while cooking.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy before cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished pancakes when served.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas bubbles that lighten the batter. Under-rising leaves dense pancakes, while the batter should be fully combined first so the yeast is evenly distributed.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, 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

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes