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Excellent Buckwheat Cakes

A batter of buckwheat flour, cornmeal, salt, yeast, and tepid water is baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Excellent Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Make a well in the center and add the yeast.

  3. Gradually stir in tepid water until you have a moderately thick batter.

  4. Let the batter rise for about 3 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake on a griddle until golden brown.

  2. Serve with butter and molasses to taste.

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).

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 cakes and gives them their earthy flavor.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarser texture and a slightly sweet corn flavor to the cakes.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise for about 3 hours. Yeast needs time to ferment the batter, producing gas that leavens the cakes. Rising too briefly leaves them dense, while letting the batter go too long can make it sour and weak in structure.

“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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