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Bread

Rye Bread

A bread made with grated potatoes, rye flour, wheat flour, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Boil grated potatoes in water until thickened.

  2. While hot, sift in rye flour until thick enough to stir.

  3. Let cool, then add yeast and let rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, mix in wheat flour.

  2. Shape into pans and bake.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + ryetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch thickens the water and holds moisture, keeping the bread soft.
Rye flour
Gives the dough its dense body and characteristic flavor, with less structure than wheat.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Wheat flour
Its gluten adds elasticity and structure so the loaves hold their shape.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep flavor and color, and food for the yeast.

The step that matters

Let the sponge cool before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the potato and rye mixture must be cool enough to touch before the yeast goes in.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, rye, flour, wheat):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, rye, flour, wheat. 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.

More rye bread recipes

Torte 7Indian 6Molasses 5Sourdough 4Graham 3Steamed 3 See all 103 →

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