Name: Rye Bread
Ingredients: 3 or 4 small potatoes; 1 cup rye flour (scalded); 1 quart warm water; ½ cake yeast (soaked); ½ cup Orleans molasses; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon lard or butter; 1 teaspoon caraway seed (optional); rye flour (enough to achieve desired consistency)

Why it works: Rye and caraway share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 87 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes until tender, then mash and beat well.
Scald 1 cup of rye flour and mix until free of lumps.
Add the mashed potatoes to the flour and mix together.
Stir in 1 quart of warm water and the soaked yeast.
Add enough rye flour to achieve a sponge-like consistency.
In the morning, add ½ cup of molasses, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of lard or butter, and 1 teaspoon of caraway seed if using.
Mix in enough rye flour to form a stiff dough.
Let the dough rise once before shaping into loaves.

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 + carawaytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + ryetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, rye, flour, molasses, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Carawaythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, rye, flour, molasses, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.