Name: Rye Bread
Ingredients: 4 cups rye flour; 1 cup cornmeal; a handful of wheat flour

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

4 cups rye flour
1 cup cornmeal
a handful of wheat flour

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

Combine rye flour, cornmeal, and wheat flour in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.
Shape the dough and place it in a greased loaf pan.

Bake

Bake in a preheated 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.

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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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: Provides the main structure and a dense, earthy crumb in this loaf.
Cornmeal: Adds coarse texture and a slightly grainy bite to the crumb.
Wheat flour: Adds gluten to help hold the shaped loaf together.

“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.