Name: Dyspepsia Bread
Ingredients: 6 quarts wheat meal; 1 cup good yeast; ½ cup molasses; 1 pint milk-warm water; 1 teaspoon pearlash or saleratus

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Dyspepsia Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Sift the wheat meal through a fine sieve to remove coarse particles.
In a bowl, mix the yeast, molasses, and warm water.
Make a well in the center of the meal and pour in the mixture.
Stir until the mixture resembles a batter.

Shape and bake

Knead the dough until it is light, then divide it into 4 loaves.
Place the loaves in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) and bake for about 1.5 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,243 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together702 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat meal: Forms the bulk of the dough and provides the structure that holds the loaves together.
Yeast: Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Molasses: Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and color to the crumb and crust.
Pearlash or saleratus: Alkaline leavener that reacts to lighten the dough and help it rise.

“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.