Name: New England Kye and Indian Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart Indian meal; 1 quart rye flour; ½ cup molasses; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup active yeast; 1 teaspoon baking soda; Water as needed

Why it works: Rye and flour 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 ↓

New England Kye and Indian Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

Scald the Indian meal and let it cool.
Add the rye flour, molasses, salt, yeast, and baking soda to the cooled meal.
Mix well and add more water if needed.
Let the mixture rise.

Bake or steam

Bake for 2 hours or steam for 3 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.

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.

Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together804 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

Indian meal: Forms the coarse, crumbly body of the bread.
Rye flour: Adds structure and a dense, earthy flavor.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, moisture, and browning, and reacts with the baking soda.
Yeast: Produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses acidity to release gas and lighten the crumb.

“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.