Name: Oat, Corn and Barley Bread
Ingredients: oat meal, corn meal, or barley meal/flour; boiling water; yeast; whole wheat flour

Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Oat, Corn and Barley Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

oat meal, corn meal, or barley meal/flour
boiling water
yeast
whole wheat flour

Directions

Pour boiling water over oat meal, corn meal, or barley meal/flour and let it swell for at least 1 hour.
Add yeast to the mixture after it has swelled.
Mix in whole wheat flour to form a dough.
Shape the dough into muffins or rolls.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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.

Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).