An Old Time Buckwheat Threshing
Of Buckwheat Cakes and Buckwheat
In 1835 the pancake house was born as an American Institution. It was a seasonal institution because the buckwheat cake was a seasonal dish—a staple of inexpensive cold weather eating throughout the United States. But in New York, the autumn of 1835, two boardinghouse keepers decided to cut to the chase—“At each establishment may be found about half a dozen small tables, where a man may quietly enjoy himself with his cakes, coffee, and a newspaper. Instead of trusting to hired cooks to spoils the cakes, (as in the large establishments, hotels, Yc.) the mistress of the house makes and attends to them herself; and they are always made good, possessing the genuine flavor of the buckwheat, raised light and baked to a turn. [“Buckwheat Cakes,” Philadelphia Inquirer (October 24, 1835), 2.] In the taste of the average America the buckwheat cake far exceeded the appeal of the wheat flour pancake. No poet ever rhapsodized over flapjacks in the public papers, but in 1819 a wide reprinted ode, “Buckwheat Cakes” spoke the American consumers’ delight:
O hot buckwheat cake! On a cold frosty morning,
When smoking and light from the griddle they come,
With fresh melting butter their surface adorning,
Would strike all the praise of an epicure dumb!
And behold too, at eve, by the fire-side bright beaming,
Where beauty prepares what industry partakes,
In honey and cream so deliciously swimming,
A full plate of light, smoking, hot buckwheat cakes!
[“Buckwheat Cakes,” Republican Farmer (April 14, 1819), 4].
The 1830s were the great decade of the cake, when chemical leavens (salaeratus) replaced yeast in their preparation and made the wait to get the batter active unnecessary. Immediate gratification made the cakes even more of a household staple and eating house treat. Every city had a spot that severed them and advertised the fact. Even New Orleans had John Pollen’s The Cottage, which put them on the standard bill of fare in November and kept them there through April.
Though buckwheat cakes might be had cheaply in every hamlet in the United States—even in the far west by 1840, buckwheat as a crop had a decided geography where it was grown in the antebellum period: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Connecticut, Virginia, Vermont, Michigan and New Hampshire were its primary growing regions. Only after the Civil War did farmers fully realize its important in keeping the honey bees and native pollinators happy and healthy through the year.
Buckwheat became part of the field crop system in America during the colonial period, though the plant during the age of 19th century agricultural experiment (1820s-1880s) was esteemed as much for its serving as a green manure as for its groats. A pseudo-cereal, it came into England in the 1500s brought in from Asia and was conveyed to North America early in the colonial era, because it could produce on poor sandy soils, required minimal fertilization (indeed a single plowing before seeding would give rise to a healthy crop), and could grow in the same field without rotation for ten years without diminution of production. By the 1840s parts of New England and the South had concluded it was the most profitable and labor saving field crop to use for hog fodder. [“Buckwheat,” Massachusetts Plowman (June 17, 1843), 1. The seed was cheap, cheaper than clover, so if one was building soil by plowing in green matter, buckwheat was the more economical choice. Yet despite its economies, it did not become a regular rotation crop, “but is cultivated on some piece of new land, or some field out its regular order” [“Buckwheat,” Lexington KY True American (May 6, 1846), 4].
Groats were milled for buckwheat flour (175 lbs or groats converted to 100 lbs of flour). The flour went largely to the making of buckwheat cakes, “essential to a cold weather meal. In its season it is used almost exclusively by the poorer classes, both on the score of economy and of convenience” [“Buckwheat,” Lexington KY True American (May 6, 1846), 4]. It was frequently co-cropped with rye. The buckwheat vegetates more quickly, and the rye comes up beneath it, forming a green carpet that prevents the harvest groats from being sandy. It could be planted at transition points in the growth cycle as long as frost and excessive heat could be avoided during the flowering time. In the South it was an early Spring crop—in the North it was planted late in summer—in July and August for autumn harvest.
No early advertisement noted the variety of buckwheat being grown. But the five surviving landraces maintained by the USDA germ plasm repository are all white Tartarian strains. In the 1870s Japanese Black buckwheat was imported and established in fields. This black Tartarian buckwheat, or mountain buckwheat (used for soba noodles in Japan) had a pleasing peppery taste, constrasted to the piquant wholesome taste of white buckwheat.