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Bread

Eye Bread

Eye Bread is a rye and cornmeal loaf baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Eye Bread

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 ↓

Eye Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix the rye flour, cornmeal, and wheat flour together.

  2. Shape the dough and place it in a baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 to 3 hours, or steam for 2 hours and then bake for 1 hour.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Rye flour
Gives the bread its dark color, earthy flavor, and dense crumb.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, slightly crunchy texture and mild sweet corn flavor.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten, giving the dough some elasticity and structure.

The step that matters

Long, low bake. Rye flour has little gluten, so the crumb sets slowly and stays dense. A long bake at low heat lets the centre cook through without over-browning the crust.

“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.

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