Name: Rye Bread
Ingredients: ½ cake of yeast; 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; 1⅓ cups tepid water; 1 cup white flour; rye flour (enough to make a stiff dough)

Why it works: Flour and rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rye Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the yeast, sugar, and salt in the tepid water.
Stir in the white flour until smooth.
Add enough rye flour to form a dough that is stiffer than white bread dough.
Knead the dough thoroughly for about 15 minutes.
Set the dough aside to rise.
In the morning, shape it into a loaf and place it in a crusty bread pan.

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.

Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Sugar + ryetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together535 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).