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Bread

Caraway Rye Bread

A yeast bread made with rye flour, caraway seeds, and walnut meats, baked into loaves or muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Caraway Rye Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Melt the chopped suet and add it to the milk, boiling water, brown sugar, salt, and lukewarm water.

  2. When lukewarm, add the softened yeast and flour; beat well and cover.

  3. Let rise until doubled in bulk.

  4. Beat again, then add caraway seeds and walnut meats if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in two loaves or use part for muffins.

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 + walnuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  4. Caraway + wheattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light before baking.
Rye flour
Adds flavor and a denser crumb, with gluten from the whole-wheat flour giving structure.
Whole-wheat flour
Provides gluten to build structure that holds the risen dough.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the loaf.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let rise until doubled in bulk. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and stretch the gluten network. Rye flour has less gluten than wheat, so the dough may rise more slowly and stay denser; underproofing leaves a heavy loaf.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, molasses, wheat, flour, walnut, meat):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

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

“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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