Name: Entire Wheat Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart entire wheat flour; 1 quart bread flour; 1 yeast cake; 1½ pints liquid (part milk and part water or all water); ¼ cup molasses; salt to taste; 1 heaping tablespoon lard; ½ cup chopped walnut meats (optional)

Why it works: Wheat and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Entire Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the milk and cool it.
In a large bowl, combine entire wheat flour, bread flour, yeast cake, cooled milk, liquid, molasses, salt, and lard.
Mix until well combined and let rise until very light.
If making nut bread, add chopped walnut meats in the morning before baking.

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 + walnuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together246 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, flour, bread, milk, molasses, meat):

Almondfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Beansfits about as well
Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, bread, milk, molasses, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.