Name: Entire Wheat Bread with Baking Powder
Ingredients: 2 pints whole wheat flour; 3 teaspoons baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 cups cold water

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Entire Wheat Bread with Baking Powder

Ingredients

2 pints whole wheat flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups cold water

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt thoroughly.
Stir in the cold water until combined.
Pour the mixture into a well-greased baking pan.

Bake

Bake for 1 hour.

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.

Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 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

Whole wheat flour: Forms the main structure of the bread as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Baking powder: Releases carbon dioxide gas when moistened and heated, lifting the bread so it rises.
Cold water: Hydrates the flour to form a cohesive batter that bakes into a moist crumb.

“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.