Name: Rye Bread with a Straight Dough
Ingredients: 1 pail (2.5 quarts) water; 3 pounds sour dough; 2 ounces yeast; 8 ounces coarse sea salt; 1 ounce caraway seed; 2 pounds rye flour; 1 pound wheat flour

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Bread with a Straight Dough

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 650°F (343°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Dissolve the sour dough and yeast in the water.
Add the coarse sea salt and caraway seed.
Heat the water to 650°F (343°C).
Mix two-thirds rye flour with one-third wheat flour to make a firm dough.
Knead the dough well and let it rise until doubled in size.
Work the dough again, then scale and mold it into loaves.

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.

Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Caraway + ryetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Caraway + wheattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together44 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).