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Bread

Rye Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with wheat and rye flour, sweet milk, water, sugar, salt, and lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rye 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix wheat and rye flour in a bowl.

  2. In a separate pot, heat water and sweet milk until scalded.

  3. Add sugar, salt, lard or butter, and yeast to the liquid.

  4. Combine the liquid with the flour mixture.

  5. Knead to form a dough.

  6. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into loaves.

  2. Let the loaves rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

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. Wheat + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Wheat flour
Provides gluten network that gives the loaf its structure and chew.
Rye flour
Adds flavor and a denser crumb, since it forms less gluten than wheat.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Sweet milk
Adds richness, softness and browning from milk sugars and proteins.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas for proper volume. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough can collapse and lose 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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