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Rye Bread

A rye bread made with mashed potatoes, water, salt, wheat and rye flour, baked at 350°F for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rye 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sponge

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them finely.

  2. Combine the mashed potatoes with the cooking water and set aside to cool.

  3. In the evening, mix the potato water with warm water, a little salt, and enough flour to create a sponge.

  4. Let the sponge rise in a warm place overnight.

Make the dough and bake

  1. In the morning, add more flour to form the dough, mixing gently.

  2. Place the dough in tins and let it rise again until light.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Wheat + ryetop 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. Flour + ryetop 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. Wheat + flourtop 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
Add moisture and starch that help the bread stay soft and moist.
Rye flour
Gives the dough its characteristic flavor and a denser, moister crumb than wheat flour.
Wheat flour
Its gluten forms structure in the sponge, helping the dough rise and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise overnight. The sponge needs time in a warm place to ferment and develop flavor and lift before the dough is formed. Rye flour has little gluten, so the wheat flour and the long fermentation carry most of the structure.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

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

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